Women could well be the answer to the skills shortages affecting the resources sector.

The problems the industry faces in getting women to join seem to be largely perception-based.

One way around this is to promote the industry at schools to show women can have a positive impact.

One way to do this is to set up an organisation drawing together educators, parents, the industry, women and other key stakeholders to help overcome the knowledge gap.

Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University dean of institutional relations Dr Zlatica Kraljevic believes women are a largely untapped resource to answer the skills shortage.

She goes so far as to say that by encouraging more women to join the industry, it could double the skilled labour resources at its disposal.

For her part, Kraljevic was the first woman to graduate from the University of Arizona's chemical engineering program.

The Dean said she was "challenge-driven", which - along with an aptitude for maths and science - led her to pursue a chemical engineering career. In turn she has held several senior management roles in the energy sector.

However, while such women have led the way for others, females are in the minority in senior resources positions.

That could be largely down to lack of education.

Kraljevic argues women are just as competent and technically able as their male counterparts - they just do not realise the opportunities awaiting them in the extractive industries.

"Women are as capable as their male counterparts but have a slightly different viewpoint," Kraljevic said.

"The combination of the two different view points will make the industry more powerful."

The problems the oil and gas businesses face in attracting women are largely perception driven.

Firstly there is the belief that the bulk of work in these industries is either out in the bush or on oil rigs out at sea.

Secondly there is a belief that the industries interfere with things such as having a family.

Then there is the issue of peer pressure for them to follow more "feminine" career paths.

Gaining acceptance in the resources sector has often proved difficult for women, particularly in the underground side. Superstitions that women were bad luck underground led to prohibitions on females even visiting underground workings being written into each state's mining legislation.

Kraljevic said the industries needed to take a more marketing-driven approach and promote themselves to women to overcome these negative connotations.

"My experience has been that women in other professions, once they learn about the energy industry, say they wish they'd known about it when they were making their career choices," she said.

"These are capable women [and] if they'd had the information the choice would have been to go into the industry rather than more traditional professions.

"The other thing I've seen is that high school girls are doing very well in maths and sciences. But once they graduate they face pressure to go into something more 'feminine' than oil and gas or mining."

Her answer to these problems is to start organisations drawing together key stakeholders such as women, educators, industry representatives and government, that can show the benefits of the resources sector and shoot down a lot of the misconceptions people have about it. After all, fear and bias are often driven by ignorance.

One such initiative Kraljevic was involved in was the Greater Houston Energy Education Collaborative.

Besides having the unfortunate phonetic acronym of "geek", the collaborative won an award from World Oil for its efforts to promote the industry to women.

"Part of the energy communication initiative is to educate the parents," Kraljevic said. "It's a lack of information that makes people fearful."

Kraljevic dismissed the argument that working in the oil and gas sector would be detrimental to family life. She herself is married with children.