We Wanted To Be Famous, But We Faced Sexism

Mel Brown, better known as Scary Spice has spoken about the sexism that the girl group faced in a male-dominated music industry back in the 1990s.

“We entered into the industry at a time when it was all boy bands and so many doors were slammed in our face like ‘girl bands are not going to work’ and we’d be like ‘yes they are, you’ll see when we’re rich and famous. But we were just on a mission, and we managed to do it.” Brown said in an interview with CNBC.

Heart Management held auditions for a girl group to compete with popular British boy bands at the time to form the iconic band.

There were five people in the group: Melanie Brown, Chisholm, Emma Bunton, Geri Halliwell-Horner, and Victoria Beckham.

The group’s “girl power” mantra pulled in a youthful, essentially female fanbase and launched them to the highest rated spot.

In 1996, the Spice Girls released their first single, “Wannabe,” which went to number one in around 30 countries.

Their first album, “Spice,” was the best-selling album of 1997 worldwide. The group has since sold in excess of 85 million records around the world.

As indicated by Melanie Brown, they write their own melodies as a group. As a matter of fact, they co-wrote all of their lyrics, saying, “we need to empower women.”

“We must ensure that girls do not feel the need to conform to this or that,”

“When we came out in the early 90s it was still very male predominant, you know, every interview, every board meeting that we went to, it was all male, and now you do see women in positions of power, not enough, not clearly enough, but it is changing,” she added.

The U.K. Music Diversity Report 2024, which surveyed 2,874 people working behind the scenes of the music industry, found that women in senior positions had risen from 40.4% in 2020 to 48.3% in 2024.

The 2024 Glastonbury Festival featured two female headlining acts for the first time in its over 50-year history. In fact, there have been incremental improvements in gender diversity in the U.K. music industry scene.

On the other hand, another report also found that women were more likely than men to receive lower wages. Overall, women made up 55% of respondents who said they were unpaid, while men only made up 30%.

Then again, 53.2% of men were procuring more than £100,000 (generally $131,000) while just 43.4% of women were additionally earning a lot more.

Also, 51% of women in the U.K. music industry have said they encountered discrimination while filling in as musicians, compared with only 6% of men, according to the 2024 Women Musicians Insight Report collated by Musician’s Census.

According to the Musician’s Census, compared to 5% of men, almost a third of female respondents reported experiencing sexual harassment while working in the music industry.

In an interview with Female First in 2018, Chisholm said that the group’s “girl power” slogan was inspired by their struggles with gender discrimination in the industry.

“When we started, we were a pop group and we just wanted to sing and be famous and travel the world and we never really thought about that side of things at all. But, as soon as we were heading into the music industry, we started to be faced with some sexism. We were told girls don’t sell,” Chisholm said.

“It gave us even more determination to succeed because we realised very early on, we weren’t just doing it for ourselves and each other, we were doing it for girls. Being told we couldn’t do something was like a red rag to a bull to the Spice Girls,” she added.