By the strictest terms: "Women are not funny" is difficult to debate because of wording.

Humour is interesting in that judging whether something is funny or not depends on personal taste and claiming that someone is funny or not funny is a subjective description and opinions will vary from person to person. With this being said lets state some points points that would be generally agreed upon by the large majority of people that relate to this topic.

1. There exist funny women.

2. There are not as many successful female comedians as their are successful male comedians.

For some reason those who choose to agree with this argument overall think this is enough justification for the statement women are not funny.

To say women are not funny is a fallacy because just because group a has an attribute greater than group b does not mean group b does not have that attribute.

I cast my vote against this argument because it is illogical.

However saying that generally women are not funny is perfectly valid as long as you realise that this is not an intrinsic quality. Contrary to what Christopher Hitchens would like you to believe being funny is not an evolutionary quality. Men did not evolve a humour gene or anything of the sort. Humours is tied heavily to language and interconnecting ideas and culture reference points, what you find humorous depends heavily on your familiarity with it. Basically humour is something that changes with culture, something that changes at are rate so grand that you couldn't reasonably say that humour is selected for through evolution. Also humour is an effect that stems from intricacies in language, not something evolution has a part in. The reason behind women not being as funny as men is purely cultural. Society encourages men to be outspoken and women to be pleasant and submissive. The qualities that are required to be a comedian is something encouraged in men and not women. These qualities are self assuredness, unapologetic honesty and and a refusal to pander. Since men and women both have no problem in understanding a joke I believe the mental faculties involved in their formulation are there, but what is encouraged in one gender but not the other are the qualities that give rise to a good comedian.

Also did people forget that there is no point arguing about generalisations because they misrepresent the population they are trying to represent?