Going from a Woman in STEM to Woman in SPAM (and loving it)
This is more of a personal blog today. I’m someone who has been both a Woman in STEM and a Woman in SPAM, and here are my honest thoughts and reflections from the transition between them.
Firstly, what are these two things?
A Woman in STEM is a woman who works in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths professions [1]. These are your more traditionally male-dominated industries where it has been harder for women to break into, gain representation and from personal experience, be taken seriously.
A Woman in SPAM is a woman who works in Social Media, PR, Advertising and Marketing professions [2], a fun variation penned by creator Laura Cameron [3].
The gist of her messaging is that now Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for the STEM industry roles, therefore the value realisation switches back to the creatives (like SPAM) that have been previously ridiculed before - the artists, the designers, the storytellers. All the things that AI cannot replace because they are authentically human from our minds and lived experiences.
If you want an example, simply look at the tidal wave of AI-design posters around. (Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.) We NEED human-led creative design. All credit to this illustrated example that clearly explains the issue by Kowen Photography on Instagram [4].
Arguably, I’ve been SPAM -> STEM -> SPAM again like a little bit of a boomerang. Here’s how it went down.
In my education I was gifted and talented in school for digital design, I absolutely loved designing graphics, web pages and stationery templates spending most spare time on a computer dabbling around learning how to code in HTML and CSS.
I was a creative soul, your typical woman in SPAM. I went on to do IT in college with a sole purpose of doing digital media as a career. I had brilliant (male) tutors who really pushed me to go to university and expand more on a talent in website development.
Then I went to uni and did digital media and web development, following the dream. This was me entering the STEM world, as I did Computing with a lot of heavy technical modules. I was even involved in a group chat called ‘Java can die’. Java’s a programming language [5], if that just made you raise your eyebrows.
Sadly, Java wasn’t my only problem. Having had supportive male tutors in college, I started to learn in uni that STEM was very much a man’s world. I need to add a disclaimer that it wasn’t all of my university lecturers, but it was definitely about half of them that made IT feel like a man’s world where women weren’t so welcome. There were particular encounters such as:
An assignment one day to create our own CVs for future job applications. I put everything into creating a distinctive graphic CV that I was sure would make me stand out in a sea of applicants. After proudly submitting it, I had the lecturer publicly insult it in front of class and tell me to do a generic, plain one to be serious.
In another assignment we were expecting to write a full report detailing ETL (Extract, Transformation and Loading of data [6], if you’re interested). I put loads into creating the report, drawing all of my own diagrams rather than scraping them offline to prove that I genuinely understood the technical concepts enough.
We had to go up to our lecturer’s desk to get our grade for this report (seemed a bit archaic, but anywho). When I found out I’d got a First (1:1) I excitedly squealed “I can’t believe it!” because my hard work had paid off, to which the lecturer dryly responded “Neither can I.” This was a defining moment where I knew that STEM was a man’s world where I had to fight for a place and to be taken seriously once in it.
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Finishing university, I graduated and entered the corporate world in a career of business change consultancy. I would argue, this was still a STEM career. I had pivoted away from what I knew but started out young, fresh and ambitious, probably thinking I could be the next CEO of a global company. Over time, I started to see and learn things, such as:
It’s still very much a performance game, where people got promoted purely off connections and confidence over talent. If you can make yourself sound technical and intelligent, it wins respect but performance reviews felt like they were essentially based on whether people liked you more than what you can do in your role.
Data, Gantt charts and documents all bored me to death. I enjoyed and excelled in any opportunities I had to be creative (the SPAM girly was still in there), I took control of any communications and workshops that I could and did everything to keep on learning in branding and marketing alongside my role (personal skills, volunteering for Marketing teams, doing a professional qualification - you name it).
In 2019, I was so bored and needing a creative outlet that I went and did a casual web development course in my evenings just to CREATE something. If this inspires you, I did my course with and HIGHLY recommend Code First Girls [7] who are focused on increasing equality in this area.
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Over time the job title and salary increased but with this the burnout and mental health got worse. I discovered that I had misalignment burnout [8] which I believe is worse than ordinary burnout. If you burn out doing everything for your business, then at least it has a purpose and is going towards something in the bigger picture. Whereas when you’re being stressed to beyond your limits on corporate projects that truly don’t mean anything to you, there is no value behind the suffering so why endure it?
I made the decision to start MFD Marketing back in 2024, then saved up and prepared to go self employed over 2 years. It’s not a rash decision to be made to go from a high-paying corporate career to starting over with unpredictability in a new world and as a new business owner.
Now? There’s no greater feeling than coming back to yourself and living out the dream job that your 8 year old self wanted. It’s nice to know that the years of waiting, upskilling, saving and preparing have now finally paid off.
I unapologetically call myself a woman in SPAM once again.