'Many doors were slammed in our face’: Spice Girl Mel B speaks of music industry sexism in the 1990s

Spice Girl Melanie Brown, better known as Mel B or Scary Spice, has spoken of the sexism that the girl group faced in a male-dominated music industry during the 1990s.

Speaking to CNBC's Tania Bryer, Brown, who became a member of the iconic British pop group upon its formation in 1994, talked about a struggle to be taken seriously.

"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,'" Brown said last month in an episode of "The CNBC Conversation."

"But we were just on a mission, and we managed to do it."

The iconic band was put together by Heart Management, which held auditions for a girl group that would compete with popular British boy bands at the time. The group is made up of five members: Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Emma Bunton, Geri Halliwell-Horner, and Victoria Beckham.

The group's "girl power" mantra attracted a young, mainly female fanbase and launched them to the top of the charts.

The Spice Girls' debut single "Wannabe" in 1996 was a number one hit in around 30 countries and the first album "Spice" became the world's top-selling album of 1997. The group has gone on to sell more than 85 million records worldwide.

"We wrote all of our own songs so we'd all be there writing lyrics together going 'no we need to empower women, we need to make sure that girls don't feel like they have to conform to this or to that,'" Brown told CNBC.

"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,