For Alice Brooks, a pathway into engineering was a somewhat natural course. When she asked her father — robotics expert Rodney Brooks, one of the founders of iRobot — if Santa Claus could bring her a Barbie, she received a saw instead so she could make her own dolls and dollhouses.

She said it was that hands-on experience of building and making things which sparked an interest and saw her finish her masters in mechanical engineering at 23. However, it seems that the question of how to encourage more women into careers such as engineering, science and information technology is one still in need of an answer.

The 26-year-old Brooks is in Melbourne at the Australian Toy Hobby & Licensing Fair promoting a dollhouse called Roominate that she developed with electrical engineering masters graduate Bettina Chen. It is a dollhouse that operates lights, fans and lifts with the use of motors and light circuits.

Brooks said she and Chen thought of the concept when they asked how more women could become interested in engineering and realised that "we were really inspired by what we played with when we were younger".