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Debate: Are men finished? – Metro US

Debate: Are men finished?

The age-old debate between men and women continued Tuesday night at New York University’s Skirball Center.

In an Intelligence Squared debate, people in the audience ended up siding with a team making the argument that “men are finished.”

ABC News Legal Analyst Dan Abrams and journalist Hanna Rosin convinced the audience that women are now the dominant sex due to shifting cultural values and a changing economy.

Christina Hoff Sommers, feminist scholar and author and David Zinczenko, EVP/Editor-in-Chief of Men’s Health Magazine debated the point, saying that men are still stronger politically and economically and are not yet, in fact, finished.

However, the audience sided with Rosin and Abrams who pointed out that for every two men who get a college degree, three women will do the same.

“So why are women getting more college degrees?” asked Rosin. “It’s not that women are smarter because they’re not smarter. Men and women test about the same on standardized tests for both math and English. But women have something. Some sociologists call it grit, some call it engagement, some call it focus, some call it social intelligence. It’s some special formula that’s required for success these days, which women just seem to have in greater abundance than men. And this is a very new thing.”

About 46 percent of audience members ended up changing their minds during the debate to side with Abrams and Rosin, so perhaps that grit she mentions is really just the power of persuasion.

Do you think men are finished?