4B movement: what is it and how did it start?

A radical feminist campaign to respond to gender inequality and violence against women by swearing off sex, dating, marriage and babies is gaining traction with young women in the US.

The 4B movement began in South Korea as a protest at the country’s "pervasive" misogyny and spread to the US after Donald Trump's election as president in November 2024 sparked American women’s "fears about the future for women’s rights", said Youngmi Kim, a Korean studies lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, in an article on The Conversation.

The movement is "going viral" in America among women "who are furious with the men who helped the former president clinch a win", said Politico. But, despite online videos about 4B gaining "millions of views", it is still "too soon to say" if the 4B movement has genuinely taken off in the US.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What is the 4B movement?

The movement is based on four principles that, in South Korean, begin with the letter B: bihon (no marriage), bichulsan (no childbirth), biyeonae (no dating), and bisex (no sex). By “rejecting any relationship dynamics that could harm them” women followers view adopting the 4Bs as a "necessity for their protection and survival", and hope it will create a "lasting change in the way women are treated across the world", said Forbes.

How did the 4B movement start?

It began in South Korea in the mid-2010s, springing from previous online feminist movements, including the "Escape the Corset" movement that called for women to liberate themselves from oppression, and South Korea's #MeToo movement.

Women in South Korea are expected to "defer to their fathers and to adhere to rigid beauty standards". In the view of 4B followers, South Korean culture is "hopelessly patriarchal", often "downright misogynistic", said The Cut.

But the movement also has roots in South Korea's "rapid economic transformation" and the challenges it posed for young people in the 2000s, said gender and women's history scholar Ming Gao in an article on The Conversation. That economic insecurity is "compounded by systemic gender inequality", with South Korea consistently having the worst gender pay gap in the OECD. Women earn 31% less than men, almost triple the average of 12.1% across comparable countries. The incidence of intimate partner violence was found to be 41.5% in a 2016 survey, compared with a global average of 30%. "Against this backdrop, traditional life paths – marriage, childbearing and homemaking – have become less appealing."

South Korea's birth rate – among the lowest in the world – has also played a part. In 2016, the government launched a pink birth map "visualising the number of women of reproductive age in each district", which "sparked outrage". Women proclaimed: "A woman is not a baby-making machine."

One noteworthy aspect of the 4B movement is that many of its members engage with it anonymously, said London's The Standard. Its followers say it's a "way of life that allows them to boycott a system that encourages gender inequality".

How widespread is it?

The 4B community has "provided a refuge for Korean women", but it is "unclear how widespread or popular" it is, given its "fluid online and offline nature, and its evolution over the years", said The Cut.

The movement is "not organised or centralised", said Modern Diplomacy. It has "no leaders, no official website, and no physical headquarters". But what's clear is that, despite the government investing more than $200 billion (£164 billion) over the past 16 years to support "traditional patriarchal institutions" and combat the country's low birth rate and oncoming demographic crisis, South Korean women are "increasingly distancing themselves from marriage or the obligation to become mothers".

Like any social movement, 4B has "its own internal rifts and divisions", said The Cut. Members are at odds over whether 4B women can be friends with men, or with women who still want to date men. Some argue that lesbianism is a necessity, and there are concerns over the movement's exclusion of trans women.

Will 4B take off in the US?

The 4B movement "began as a protest, but it has morphed into a global awakening" after having been "sensationalised" by Western media, said Isha Sharma in USA Today.

It "might seem too radical to get far in the US" but it demonstrates how women "feel more vulnerable" after Trump's re-election, said Politico. If it does catch on in earnest, it could, as in South Korea, lead to women "reconsidering dates with men out of suspicion and lack of trust", lower birth rates, and both sexes expressing "deep loneliness".

It could also be exploited, with politicians "leaning harder into gender-divide politics" for "their own gain". And women "may turn against one another" in a dispute over the movement’s aims. For now, however, the "movement appears on the upswing".

According to Katharine Moon, a US political science professor at Wellesley College, the difference between a potential 4B movement in America and what already exists in South Korea is "the centrality of marriage", said The New York Times. In South Korea, not being married can "result in women becoming social pariahs" or not being socially recognised as adults. This makes rejection of marriage a more "radical statement" for South Korean women than American ones. In the US, the surge in interest is a "temporary means to bring attention to the precarious situation of women", rather than "a total commitment" to life without men. In South Korea, "it's a way of life".

It is also tapping into a growing celibacy movement around the world. In the US, the "boysober" trend has already seen young women eschewing dating, said The Guardian. Globally, "multiple studies show that more and more young people seem to be – quite happily – opting out of sex".