I think there have always been funny women from Carol Burnett to Joan Rivers. When the audience sees a woman they innately know she's worked twice as hard to get there she's had to prove that she can be the leader first and then be funny on top of it. She has to emit a confidence that she's in control.
The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.