Vice president of Robogals Newcastle, May Hane, said girls quickly picked up on stereotypes about engineering, for example.

“If you ask someone to picture an engineer, many people will picture a big dude in a hard hat and overalls,” Ms Hane said.

That’s where the worldwide Robogals organisation comes in.

Robogals is devoted to increasing female participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The Newcastle chapter of the international organisation, which is run by Newcastle University students, visited Toronto Library on Friday to host a robotics workshop for girls aged 10 to 14.

What made the Toronto workshop unique was that for the first time it featured 24 girls who are either home schooled, or study through distance education.

“The team believes that every girl deserves an opportunity to explore and strengthen their science, mathematics and robotics side, whether they are at school or not,” Ms Hane said.

“We start the workshops with a five-minute presentation explaining what engineering is, how we do it, and what it involves.

“We tell the girls that in Australia, less than 8 per cent of engineers in Australia are women.

“But the message is that anyone can do it, and that girls just have a different approach.”

The girls are then tasked with using Lego NXT robots to attempt challenges and solve problems found in real science and engineering scenarios.

On Friday, the girls were split into teams and challenged to use laptop computers to devise and program a series of instructions to enable their Lego NXT robots to navigate a maze.

Ms Hane said the girls were always interested to learn there were different types of engineering, including chemical engineering.

“We always emphasise that in chemical engineering you might get to work on cosmetics or chocolates,” she smiled.