If you are a straight woman or have single female friends, you’re likely familiar with the state of dating. Women are struggling to cope with the pressures of full-time jobs in addition to child rearing, everyday home maintenance, and keeping up appearances. It’s a pressure that seems to be felt worldwide, so, in response, a small band of women in South Korea came up with the “4B movement.”
The 4B movement found its legs in 2019 on Twitter (now X). In the years since then, the movement has been slow to grow, but after TikTok picked up the call to action, it has found footing worldwide, specifically in the West.
What does 4B stand for?
Four tenets make up the 4B movement:
- Bihon: no heterosexual marriage.
- Bisekseu: no child birth.
- Biyeonae: no dating men.
- Bisekseu: no heterosexual relationships.
Where did 4B come from?
The movement is built around the above-mentioned four tenets, which were laid out by author Cho Nam-Joo in her 2016 debut novel, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982. The novel follows millennial everywoman Kim Jiyoung as she falls deeper into “psychic deterioration in the face of rampant misogyny.” The novel helped to shed light on the rampant sexism, inequality, and misogyny in South Korea, a message that strikes a chord with women worldwide.
The movement is still very small in South Korea. The fringe movement doesn’t look to fight patriarchy, rather, it intends to move away from it entirely. It comes on the tail of the 2017 Escape the Corset movement that encouraged women to wear less makeup, stop wearing “sexy” clothes, and cut their hair short. South Korea is a relatively conservative country, and the less-feminine appearance can cause controversy.
One activist shared her experience, revealing that not only is the role of women in Korean society to “be silent,” but misogyny runs rampant.
“Misogyny is still very common in this society, in the culture and in the system. It’s not shocking to hear things like: ‘How dare a woman talk back to a man?’. Systematically as well, Korea is the country with the biggest wage gap among OECD countries.”
Beyond women being pushed to the proverbial back of the line, South Korea has some of the strictest beauty standards in the world — almost exclusively aimed at women. It’s not uncommon to gift children plastic surgery as a reward for finishing high school. “More than half of all the girls in my class in high school got plastic surgery as a graduation gift,” the activist admitted.
South Korea is the plastic surgery capital of the world, with 1 in 3 women going under the knife.
The arduous task of applying makeup starts as young as 10 for some girls, who spend thousands of dollars and hours of their lives trying to fit the societal expectation of what a woman should be. It’s seen as a form of labor, one that only women are expected to perform, and offers no compensation. It’s a frustration that Western women mirror. Why should women exert so much time and effort, when so little is expected of men?
The darker side of the movement goes beyond appearance to the safety of women. For years South Korean citizens have called for more protections when it comes to digital sex crimes. Molka, as it’s known, is a lucrative market, selling nude images of unsuspecting women using the toilet, or simply walking over the wrong grate while wearing a skirt. The punishment for digital sex crimes is a meager fine that rarely dissuades continued offenses.
Additionally, South Korea has one of the highest rates of femicide, and intimate partner femicide in the world. Estimates say that roughly every 2 days a woman is killed in S.K., and 98% of homicide victims are women.
Sexual assault is even more prevalent. 80% of women reported sexual harassment in the workplace. In 2023, the Minister of Gender and Family pushed to redefine rape to include non-consensual sexual relationships, but the Minister of Justice struck down the proposal within hours. The current president of the nation is on track to dismantle the Ministry of Gender and Family saying it, “treats men like, “potential sex criminals.”
The lax attitude around violence towards women, according to the Gender in Geopolitics Institute, can be explained by the patriarchal system, primarily Confucianism, that Korean society is built on. The hierarchical system is at odds with feminism and places greater importance on male heirs who are seen as less burdensome. There is even a term for it — “Nam-Jon-Yeo-Bi,” which translates to “The man is higher than the woman.”
For women who choose to start families, the conservative nature of the country routinely forces them to table their careers and put their duties as wives and mothers front and center. However, it’s not as if they’re encouraged to quit their jobs, rather, they are expected to continue their full-time position while also shouldering the majority of household labor and child-rearing.
The 4B movement might not have swept South Korea by storm, but it has opened a channel for meaningful conversations about women’s daily experiences. The South Korean government is taking active steps to dismantle what little feminist progress the country has seen over the last 20 years, to cater to the “young male voters who harbored resentment towards the growing influence of feminism.”