Contesting the oft-repeated phrase that “women aren’t funny”, a group of Canberra comedians are taking the stage together for the Canberra Comedy Festival with a menacing-sounding show called Why Women Kill… at Comedy.

In 2013, Forbes Magazine compiled the list of the top 10 earning comedians for the year and found none were women, but that was then. In 2025 the entire women’s stream at the festival seems set to prove that the outdated adage about women is simply laughable, as I find when I catch up with Katrin Praseli, Jelin Palm, and Janine Jeffreys – who’ll be joined by Effie Tan, who’s just moved to Melbourne, in their debut performance together.

With an age-range from the 20s to the 70s, multicultural backgrounds and cats and husbands to satirise, there’s no shortage of targets for their humour.

If that’s not enough, they’ll be “wrangled” by Sarah Ison, an expert in the comedy of politics as a former federal political reporter and a working member of the press gallery. She’ll be introducing each of them and keeping the program moving along in the 60-minute show.

Three of the self-styled “four fierce and funny ladies” are multilingual and all have been taking raw comedy competitions by storm. They met at open mic evenings and on a Women in Comedy chat group on Messenger before deciding to join forces.

Each of them brings a particular edge to the comedy scene. 

Palm, the newest on the comedy round, has already shared the stage with comedy identities Peter Hellier and Dane Simpson. She’s married to a Papua New Guinean and, with a Chinese background, that makes for an idiosyncratic take on what happens when “budget-savvy Asian meets free-spirited Islander.” 

Tan was a state finalist for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Raw Comedy competition last year and has been performing at comedy clubs in Manhattan. She’s only in her 20s.

Praseli, who moonlights as a member of an Indonesian dance troupe, declares herself an expert on “mediocre motherhood” is well-known for her rapid-fire comedy style.

And Jeffreys, at 73, knows a thing or two about showbiz, having been working for years as head of wardrobe at the Canberra Theatre, describes herself as “the oldest new face on the comedy scene”. 

Collectively they have a lot to laugh about.

That, they assure me, is very different from what men think is funny – namely, “penises, boobs and how they’re going to cheat on their wives”.

Women do have their specialties to match, of course, evidenced by the success of a famous comedy musical about menopause that does well on stage with audiences of a certain gender. 

“We take different angles,” Palm tells me, adding that they all have tightly written scripts, but have spent quite a bit of time making sure that they don’t overlap. 

It’s not all that hard. Tan, being single, talks about life in one’s 20s, being single and wanting or not wanting to get married. 

Praseli, of Indonesian Chinese background, has a two-year-old child and is married to a German, so has fun negotiating cultural differences, while Palm has an eight-year-old and is used to contending with different money values, different approaches to raising children and, of course, the clash between Chinese punctuality and “Island time”. Both husbands come in for quite a bit of lampooning. 

Jeffreys, also single and a “crazy cat lady”, covers that part of life when an older woman becomes invisible, telling me that being old and decrepit gets a lot of laughs, too.

“I used to want to be a go-go dancer on TV, but now I just want to wake up in the morning,” she quips.

When it comes down to it, they say, women’s comedy is all about the cycle of life.

Why Women Kill… at Comedy. Courtyard Studio, March 16 and at Fun Time Pony, Civic, March 19.