In South Korea, thousands of women have decided to opt out of dealing with men entirely. They are refusing to marry (bihon), have children (bichulsan), date (biyeonae) or have sex (bisekseu) with men, in a collective action known as the 4B Movement (4非).
South Korea is a deeply patriarchal culture, with a president who is actively campaigning against feminism. Things have become so intolerable that some women would now rather bring about the end of the human race than continue putting up with men. It might just be the most radical act of feminism I’ve ever heard of. It’s the ultimate “f**k around and find out”.
Reactions to the movement online have been deeply divisive, ranging from angry men on TikTok saying 4B is “of the Devil”, through to a whole lot of straight women looking at one another and saying, “I didn’t realise that was an option!”
I was pontificating the concept of the entire human race going extinct because women went on strike from men, when it suddenly dawned on me. I don’t have kids, I don’t want to get married, or be in a relationship. It’s been ages since I had sex. Am I accidentally 4B? Maybe I could make it official and swear off men entirely? But first, a bit more about what is happening in South Korea.
The origins of 4B are unclear, but it has gained considerable attention over the last few years. Cho Nam-Joo’s 2016 novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, which exposed systemic misogyny in South Korea, is often credited with sparking the movement. Before 4B, there was also the “Escape the Corset” (탈주 코르셋) movement, which saw thousands of women rejecting the stifling beauty standards of Korean culture. To give you an idea of the pressure women are under to look perfect at all times, in 2018 news anchor Lim Hyeon-ju made national headlines for being the first woman in Korean history to wear glasses on TV.
When 4B is discussed across social media, it is often linked to the plummeting birth rates in South Korea, which are now the lowest in the world. It fell by another 8 per cent last year and is now so low that the population is not replacing itself.
However, the 4B movement is quite small. Estimates range from anywhere between 5,000 to 50,000 members, in a population of 51,750,715. Its visibility is largely online, where advocates can be anonymous and therefore safer. Given the numbers and the fact it is a pretty new social phenomenon, it would be difficult to make the case that 4B is the reason the birth rate is so low in South Korea. That hasn’t stopped President Yoon Suk Yeol blaming feminism for preventing “healthy relationships” between men and women.
Other, more obvious, reasons for the failing birth rates include the astronomical costs of living and a gruelling work culture that doesn’t leave much time for a personal life. However, the Korean government has invested billions to financially incentivise married couples into having babies and that hasn’t worked. So, this isn’t just about the money.
I’m not surprised that Korean women have had enough. The gender pay gap in South Korea remains the largest in OECD countries, at a staggering 31 per cent. And according to research published by the ministry of gender equality and family in South Korea, incidences of intimate-partner violence stand at 41.5 per cent. The global average is 30 per cent.
Rather than embracing the demands of the #MeToo movement, President Yoon drew on anti-feminist rhetoric during his election campaign in order to appeal to young men. He has proposed abolishing the ministry of gender equality and family and introducing even stricter penalties for false rape accusations.
His government set about removing “gender equality” from school textbooks, and cancelled funding for feminist programmes. This political misogyny is now influencing the younger generations of South Korean men who see themselves as the victims of feminism. According to one poll, 58.6 per cent of men in their twenties “strongly oppose” feminism, with 25.9 per cent grading the intensity of their opposition as 12 on a scale of 0 to 12.
If I lived in South Korea, I am pretty sure I would opt out of that as well. Which brings me back to my original question: am I, and other single, childfree women, accidentally 4B? The obvious answer to that is no – I am not a Korean woman, living in Korea and dealing with the issues outlined above. But that doesn’t mean that my decision not to have children or marry isn’t political in its own way. It doesn’t have a name or an identity, but maybe I am part of a movement?
I’d never thought of it in that way before, but the really honest truth is that I don’t have children because I didn’t want to be a full-time carer, and I haven’t got married to a man because, well, I don’t want to be a full-time carer. Don’t get me wrong, I really like kids. I like men too, but there is no denying that women still do the bulk of the work when it comes to family life, and that’s despite an estimated 72.3 per cent of women being in employment.
According to recent research, 91 per cent of women with kids spend about an hour per day on housework, compared with 30 per cent of men. Hurrah for the 30 per cent, but it is still women who undertake most of the caring responsibilities at home, looking after children, ageing parents, and their partners, etc. I don’t want to do that. I want to look after myself and enjoy the freedom single life brings. Call me selfish if you like, but I find it incredibly liberating. When the feminists of the 60s and 70s said “women can have it all”, they didn’t mean women should do it all. I have no confidence that if I did get married and had children, I would enjoy my life, and that seems to be what is going on in South Korea as well.
We are in a fascinating point in our collective history where women do not need men in the way they once did. Some banks were still refusing to let women open their own bank accounts without a counter signature from their husband well into the 1970s. My mum couldn’t have a credit card without the application being signed by either her husband or her father as late as 1978. It is only within the last 150 years that women have been able to go to university, earn their own money, buy their own property, and control their reproductive systems. For the vast majority of our history, women needed men to provide for them and their children. But now, they don’t. It’s a profoundly radical shift.
It is this shift that has allowed me, and millions of others, to stay single and childfree. I suspect it is this shift that is underpinning movements like 4B, as more and more women are realising they do not need to rely on men to make their own way in the world.
My choices to stay single and sans children is not as radical as the women in South Korea. I am not part of an organisation, I don’t have a membership number or attend spinster meetings. I certainly don’t want to bring about the end of the human race.
But I am enjoying watching women all around the world realising that they are just fine all by themselves.
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