ALLISON Hutton was in the wet mess on a remote mining site, in the Western Australian gold fields when a fight broke out at the other end of the mess.

She had been sitting down chatting with another woman and a group of maintenance men.

"It was amazing, the reaction of the maintenance guys," Allison said.

"They formed a ring around us, facing outwards.

"Protected? Safe? You bet I was. I was well and truly looked after. That sort of memory stays with you."

It's a common impression that remote mine sites are crowded with 'blokey' men, where there's no room for women but Allison said she's felt much safer on mine sites than she has living in Perth or Brisbane

In the mid 1990s, as a young woman, Allison worked on remote mine sites in Western Australia and outback Queensland - and she loved it.

For her first experience at a remote site, she was employed as a safety advisor at Mount Keith nickel mine, about 400km north of Kalgoorlie.

Allison said when she arrived the construction phase of the project was just finishing and there were about 1500 people in camp and only about 100 of them were women.

"But it didn't matter if you were a man or a woman, we were all trying to achieve the same thing, working together, working very long hours, it was just an adventure," she said.

"I remember one truck driver on the site, he wrote poetry, he had a regular spot on the ABC radio at 11 o'clock on a Friday.

"He used to go into the manager's office, do his 10-minute spot on the radio and then go back to his truck."

After years of working with industry and living in camps and small towns, Allison now works in Gladstone as a senior lecturer at CQUniversity.

She teaches in the field of safety sciences and has students all across Australia.

"Probably about one third of the class I teach is female and I encourage them to go out on mine sites," Allison said.

But while she said her experiences working in male-dominated environments had been positive, she said it was only in the past few years that she'd started making equivalent pay to her male colleagues.

"For 10-15 years, I was consistently being paid $10,000-$20,000 less than my male colleagues doing the same role with the same experience. In some cases (they had) less experience than me," Allison said.

"That hurts."

"I think it's getting better, though we still have a long way to go."