More needs to be done to advertise the huge variety of different roles that are open to IT contractors, it has been claimed.

According to Maggie Berry, managing director of womenintechnology.co.uk, the scope of an IT contractor's work is enormous, with many different specialties and disciplines involved.

Yet still all these jobs are lumped together under the umbrella of 'information technology', which makes it difficult to understand what the role is specifically about.

Ms Berry goes on to suggest that more must therefore be done to educate people about the opportunities available to them, particularly as the EU is predicting a skills shortage in the IT sector.

"The UK needs to be generating talent in this area because IT is only going to get bigger and stretches across all different industries," she added.

Recent research from 360degreeIT suggests that only 30 per cent of the UK's IT workforce is female.