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In "De Montfort ga ga as Queen selects it for Jubilee party" (8 March), it was reported that the Duke of Edinburgh was keen to visit a robotics club designed to interest local secondary school children in engineering, while the Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge were scheduled to attend a fashion show. Traditional gender roles were thus perfectly reflected in the planned engagements.

Had the Duchess visited the robotics club as well, more school girls might have been inspired to consider engineering as a career choice and realised that having an interest in science and being fashion-conscious are not incompatible ambitions for young women in the 21st century. That would have been a "royal" message worth spreading on 8 March, International Women's Day.

Anna Notaro, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Arts and Design, University of Dundee