When Jennifer Michelsen, co-founder of Gunnar Optiks, met with a consumer electronics company in New York, she walked into a room full of men. In her office, she is known as a jokester, but here, "I told some jokes that got no response whatsoever: no emotion, just blank stares," she says. Her co-founder and the company's president, both men, tried to ease the awkward moments.

Jokes made by female senior professionals are often perceived as "contrived, defensive, or just mean," says a new report by linguistics expert Judith Baxter, head of English at Aston University's School of Language & Social Sciences in the United Kingdom. Baxter conducted her research at seven large companies and examined 14 team meetings, of which half were led by senior-level men and half by senior-level women.



Men are using humor "as a leadership tool, to ensure that they are part of the leadership tribe. The use of humor reinforces membership, whereas women don't have access to the range of humor men do," Baxter says. "If they use the jocular abuse that men use, that would be viewed negatively."



Even a psychology study published in 2011 by UC San Diego concluded that men were slightly funnier than women. The late Christopher Hitchens might have considered this a vindication of his 2007 polemic "Why Women Aren't Funny."

John Morreall, president of Humorworks in Williamsburg, Va., says traditional men's humor tends to mock and humiliate and uses jokes with punch lines, while traditional women's humor expresses support and solidarity and uses true stories without a kicker. Men defined comedy and workplace humor for years.

Clash of styles

As women "increase power in the business world, there's a clash between women's humor and men's humor," he says. "Women have this tough act because they are using a medium that is usually a male game."

Not only are women newer to the funny-at-work craft, but audiences also tend to favor men.

"Women laugh at men's humor more than men will laugh at women's humor," says Morreall. "And men will expect women to laugh at their humor, but not initiate it."

In addition to being a social lubricant, humor relieves stress and increases mental flexibility and creativity, says Morreall. Still, self-deprecating humor - traditionally women's humor - is actually best at work, he says, as it's not threatening, and no one actually thinks less of a person for it.

Morreall refers to a joke former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo told in which his wife advised him before a talk not to try to be clever, witty or intellectual but to just be himself. It was well received.

Could a woman tell the same joke about just "being herself"? Unless she is high-powered, "there might be some conflict there," he says. "Women put themselves down more than men. It would seem like an expression of a lack of confidence."

Venessa Wong is a Bloomberg Businessweek writer. E-mail: vwong70@bloomberg.net