In Western Australia's Pilbara, a team of tradeswomen are teaching young women how to build a wooden box.
The project could change the course of their working lives.
"They're learning 11 basic tools and it's not about the timber that we are using, these are the 11 tools that all trades use," founder of Supporting and Linking Tradeswomen (SALT) Fiona Shewring said.
The workshop is part of SALTs tour of more than 20 WA outback schools where it aims to encourage more girls to consider trades and apprenticeships.
The group have hosted nearly 500 across Australia in the past decade and say they are seeing results.
"We were recently in Cobar and Broken Hill and we had gone back there for a second time a few years apart and they had told us that five or six girls had gone into the trades after we'd been," Ms Shewring said.
"I thought, 'Alright, they are both industrial towns,' and I thought, 'Maybe that is why, there is lots of opportunity?'.
"But then we also went into Gundagai and that is not an industrial town, very agricultural and the same thing had happened, so we know it's working."
Women make up about 16 per cent of Australian trade and technician workers based on Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data.
Apprenticeship Support Australia says while the number of tradeswomen is increasing, they account for only 3 per cent of all electricians and one per cent of construction workers.
"We are at the starting point of changing and building awareness," female trade mentoring program manager Charlene Vaughan said of efforts to encourage Australian women into trades.
Ms Vaughan said women seeing other women in trades in person or through media is having an affect.
"Girls that have done a trade, the trend is that their parent was a tradie so they're already exposed to it.
"We need girls in front of strong women that are not afraid to get dirty, we need more role models in front of young women."
The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations says increasing the number of women in training, particularly in higher paying trade-based careers, is a key priority for the government.
It has invested $38.6 million dollars in the Women in Trades initiative and has committed to setting targets for women working on major projects.
The department cited gender norms, a lack of career advice on trades and workplace culture and support as reasons contributing to gender occupational segregation.
"What we have told the students today and we tell every student we work with is, 'If you become a tradie, you will not be without work'," Ms Shewring said.
"A job doesn't have a gender."
