Why Indian Women Can Never Have a 4B Movement Like South Korea and Why Men Benefit From It

The 4B movement in South Korea is built on four clear “no’s”, no dating men, no sex with men, no marriage, and no childbirth. It is not a trend about “hating men.” It is a refusal to keep paying the personal cost of a system where women do most of the emotional labour, most of the house labour, and still get judged, controlled, and blamed.

In India, many women privately feel the same exhaustion. But a mass, united “we are done” movement is hard to sustain here, not because Indian women lack strength, but because the system is designed to isolate them, punish them, and keep them dependent. And yes, when women stay divided, men as a group benefit, because the bargaining power never shifts.

A movement like 4B needs one basic thing, the ability to walk away without your life collapsing. In India, leaving marriage or refusing it often means losing social legitimacy, housing support, financial safety, and sometimes even physical safety. That “choice” becomes a luxury.

And the pressure is not only external. It is baked into everyday survival math, “If I don’t adjust, where will I go?” That is why many women who want equality still end up negotiating with unfairness, not because they love it, but because they are managing risk.

A united movement needs time, energy, and mental space. But women are already doing a second job at home. India’s official Time Use Survey and reporting around it show women spending vastly more time on unpaid domestic work than men, numbers like 299 minutes a day for women vs 97 for men are often cited from the survey findings.

When your day is packed with cooking, cleaning, caregiving, and then paid work for many, activism becomes another unpaid shift. A tired population does not organise easily. A busy woman is easier to control than a free woman.

In many parts of India, marriage is not just a relationship. It is a certificate that society uses to decide if a woman deserves respect. That is why a woman who questions injustice gets attacked as “characterless,” while a woman who tolerates everything is praised as “sanskari.”

This is also why men use the “my mother tolerated it” line. It sounds like wisdom, but it is actually a warning: “Suffer quietly like the women before you, or you will be punished.” The tragedy is, the mother was not “fine.” She just did not have support, options, or permission to be angry.

You said something sharp, that women don’t support women. The deeper truth is, patriarchy makes women compete for safety. If a system rewards obedience, then the “good woman” gets protection, and the “difficult woman” becomes a threat.

So women learn to distance themselves from the one who speaks up, because standing with her could make them the next target. That is not “women being enemies by nature.” That is internalised patriarchy, a survival habit created by long conditioning.

A movement like 4B often grows when women collectively realise, “This system is not protecting us.” In India, data shows how normalised spousal violence still is. NFHS-5 fact sheet data shows 29.3% of ever-married women (18–49) have experienced spousal violence (defined as physical and or sexual).

And when violence happens, many women do not seek help. Research using NFHS-5 reports help-seeking for violence at around 14.9%, and formal help is even lower.

When the system teaches women that reporting will bring shame, disbelief, or more violence, unity becomes harder. Fear breaks collectives.

Even when laws exist, women often experience the process as slow, humiliating, and uncertain. Low conviction outcomes and procedural gaps in domestic violence handling have been flagged in local studies and reporting.

And on some issues, society sends a brutal message: “Your pain is not a priority.” For example, the marital rape exception has been under legal challenge and is still a live debate in India’s courts, which shows how contested women’s bodily autonomy inside marriage remains.

A woman cannot build collective courage if the institutions around her keep signalling, “Endure, don’t escalate.”

If you cannot reliably earn, save, and live independently, opting out becomes dangerous. World Bank gender data shows female labour force participation in India remains far below men, with recent figures around 32.8% for women vs 77.1% for men (2024).

When women are pushed out of jobs or never allowed to build careers, marriage becomes a financial structure, not just an emotional one. That dependence is exactly why patriarchy prefers women to be “homemakers only.” A woman with money can say no. A woman without money is forced to negotiate.

There’s a well-known feminist idea by Deniz Kandiyoti called the patriarchal bargain. It means women often make strategic compromises inside an unfair system to gain some safety, status, or stability. The bargain helps the woman survive, but it keeps the system intact.

In India, this bargain shows up in everyday lines:

• “Adjust now, you will get respect later.”
• “Don’t argue, think of your children.”
• “Be quiet, your in-laws will accept you.”

These are not just “family values.” These are survival strategies that patriarchy sells as virtue. When enough people are trapped in bargains, collective revolt becomes rare.

Another useful lens is system justification theory, which explains why people often defend unfair systems because stability feels safer than change.

This is why you will see women themselves saying:

• “This is how marriage is.”
• “All men do this.”
• “A good wife tolerates.”

It is not because they love inequality. It is because believing “this is normal” is psychologically less frightening than admitting “this is wrong and I am alone in it.”

When women are split into “good” and “bad,” “modern” and “traditional,” “working” and “housewife,” the collective negotiating power disappears. Men do not have to change, because women cannot unify enough to demand change.

This is how men benefit:

• If women compete with each other, men never face a united boundary.
• If women shame the woman who speaks up, men keep the comfort of silence.
• If women are taught to fear being alone, men keep leverage through marriage pressure.

And the saddest part is, even women who want equality often stop “till an extent,” because going beyond that extent costs too much socially, emotionally, and sometimes physically.