Fife footballer encourages women to consider engineering career

A footballer in Fife, who has played for Scotland at international level, says women should consider a career in engineering.

Alana Marshall from Dunfermline used to be a dog walker before making the change to her new career working as a trainee engineer with Openreach.

The 34-year-old plays for Scottish Women's Premier League 1 side Spartans and has previously played for Rangers, Hibernian, Falkirk and Boroughmuir Thistle.

She also played for Fimauto Valpolicella in Italy.

Openreach says that it has had a record year in hiring engineers who are women, with 17% of the firm's intake of trainee engineers in Scotland last year being female.

The company says that the boost was partly as a result of employing language experts to transform its job adverts and descriptions, making them gender neutral.

It intends to create and fill around 500 jobs this year, with around 65 of the roles in the Kingdom.

The business is investing billions of pounds into its UK broadband network, people and training, saying that it's connecting its customers to ultrafast full fibre broadband.

It also says that it's on track to reach 25 million homes and businesses across the UK by December 2026.

The firm has already reached more than half a million properties in Scotland and has a workforce of 3,700 people north of the border.

Anas Hassan, our Kingdom FM reporter, has been chatting with Alana about her role and finding out about her footballing career.

Picture: Malcolm Mackenzie/Scottish Women's Football