ABSTRACT
Humour researchers have indeed detected differences between men and women in the sphere of humour. Some scholars claim that female humour is more empathetic and concerned with interrelationships between people, while male humour is aggressive and combative. Men and women laugh about precisely the same things, it appears, although men insist that certain type of jokes are ones women would reject as either too malicious or too embarrassing. As Fletcher observes, the biological differences that distinguished women from men were associated with a discrete female nature: compassion and empathy were now regarded as hallmarks of the feminine nature. Many of the jokes by female comics tackle the taboos in women’s lives in a society strait-jacketed in prudish norms. These strictures, the legacy of the colonial era, have received a powerful boost from the rise of Hindu fundamentalism on the subcontinent since the 1980s.
