Men 'find it harder to climb social ladder'

Story here. Excerpt:

"Men's chances of rising up the social scale in Britain have stalled because of greater competition from women and a slower rate of growth for top jobs, a study published yesterday reported...

...Worse still for men, Labour's goal to promote "equality of opportunity" failed to mention that any increase in social mobility was likely to create as many losers as winners, with men losing out to the increasing number of women pursuing careers...

...For men, the numbers who were downwardly mobile increased slightly while for women there was little change. The researchers said: "For the first time for men we are getting a situation where upward mobility is falling off and downward mobility is increasing...

...Dr Jackson, from Oxford's Centre for Research Methods in the Social Sciences, said: "The possible cause for concern is not a decline in the total mobility rate but the fact that, for men, the composition of this rate is tending to change, and in an unfavourable way."