South Korea plans new measures to boost birth rates as anti-feminist backlash persists
Story by Leila Hawkins
Photo by Ethan Brooke / creative licence
South Korea is extending paid leave for women who experience a stillbirth before the 11th week of pregnancy, as part of new measures to boost the country’s low birth rates. This will see the current allowance double from five to 10 days.
A similar allowance is to be introduced for fathers, while the eligibility period for paternity leave will rise from 90 to 120 days after birth, with a new option to take the allowance in up to three separate portions.
Parental leave is also becoming more flexible. Instead of requiring parents to take two consecutive weeks, they can now opt to split their leave into one-week increments.
To make up for workforce absences, the government will subsidise employers; it will also provide tax relief to small and medium-sized businesses that have policies that help families balance work and childcare.
Additionally, there are plans to redesign bus priority seats for pregnant women to make them more distinguishable, and the number of public facilities for postpartum care in regions where these are currently limited will be expanded.
South Korea’s population crisis
South Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, something President Yoon Suk Yeol has called a “national emergency.”
In 2023 this hit an all-time low of 0.78 — or 78 children per 100 women — significantly below the replacement level of 2.1 needed to sustain population levels. This has sparked concern about the economic consequences, including labour shortages, a shrinking consumer base, and the increasing financial burden of supporting an aging population.
In response, the South Korean government has been introducing measures to encourage people to have more children, including financial incentives for families and expanded parental leave policies.
Falling birth rates and the anti-feminist backlash
In recent years there has been a rise in anti-feminist rhetoric linking feminism to declining birth rates, suggesting it is at fault by encouraging women to reject marriage and motherhood.
South Korea has a deeply patriarchal society with entrenched traditional gender roles, where historically women have been expected to prioritise family and caregiving responsibilities. It currently ranks 94th out of 146 countries for gender equality according to the World Economic Forum, and 112th in terms of economic participation.
Feminist movements like #MeToo and 4B gained traction in the 2010s, particularly among young women. The 4B movement advocates for the four ‘nos’: do not date men, get married, have sex with men, or have children with men. But young feminists are finding themselves pitted against a historically male-dominated society, leading to protests such as this month’s sit-in at Dongduk women’s university in Seoul after it announced plans to admit male students – a symptom of the wider challenge of protecting women-only spaces.
Critics blame feminist movements for the fall in birth rates, these having been below the replacement rate needed for growth since the 1980s. However the 4B movement emerged partly as a resistance to the pro-natalist policies adopted by governments in the decades that followed, angered at the expectations of women to reproduce for the benefit of the state’s economy.
But many young men in South Korea, influenced by online communities and populist rhetoric, believe that feminist policies unfairly benefit women at their expense. This resentment has led to the rise of political figures opposing gender-focused policies, among them Suk Yeol who was elected in 2022 after promising to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and remove gender equality from school curriculums to appeal to anti-feminist voters.
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