For the first time, two women share Just For Laughs comedy title

The Just for Laughs logo. (Just for Laughs / Facebook)

MONTREAL - The first woman to win the Just For Laughs Homegrown Comics title says booking agents and fellow comedians need to do more to encourage women and other marginalized groups to perform stand-up.

Twenty-two-year-old D.J. Mausner shared the honour with another female comedian, Courtney Gilmour, at the festival's recently concluded 35th edition.

The Montreal-based Mausner says female artists are increasingly taking their place in the industry.

She wants comedians to make an effort to ensure their sets are more accessible to people of colour and other groups who have been historically alienated from traditionally male-centred material.

Martha O'Neill, founder of SheDot, a Toronto all-women comedy festival, says she's elated to see Mausner and Gilmour win the title but sad it took 19 years for a female comic to do so.

O'Neill says booking agents are hesitant to include more women in comedy lineups and female comics still have to break the stereotype that women aren't funny.