Selina Todd, a writer and Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, discusses her latest book, Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth which analyses the myth and reality of social mobility in Britain from the 19th century to the present. In this episode, Todd discusses previous measurements for understanding social mobility and how women’s consideration in this field had typically been elided because of the types of labour women perform, their interrupted career trajectories due to childbirth, and the fact that women’s and girls’ stories were never considered despite their having been integral to men’s and boys’ social mobility. Elaborating how migrants and women fulfilled certain social roles within national institutions like the NHS which furthered the social mobility of white Britons, Todd discusses how women and migrants invariably end up at the bottom of the social ladder in jobs that are not properly remunerated while these two groups paradoxically devise creative strategies for challenging these hierarchies.

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