50 Years of Women’s Protest From the Icelandic Women’s Strike to 4B/6B4T

50 Years of Women’s Protest: From the Icelandic Women’s Strike to 4B/6B4T

How have forms of women’s resistance changed over the past fifty years — from mass strikes to the rejection of social roles imposed on women?

This article examines the development of women’s protest from 1975 to 2025 through five major phenomena: the 1975 Icelandic Women’s Strike, Poland’s Black Protest, the International Women’s Strike, the #MeToo movement, and South Korea’s 4B movement and its further development, 6B4T.

The author traces how women’s resistance has gradually moved beyond traditional street protest and labour mobilisation. Strikes and the refusal of paid and unpaid work have been complemented by digital mobilisation, international solidarity, public testimony about male violence, and, ultimately, the rejection of marriage, motherhood, relationships with men, and other patriarchal social roles.

Particular attention is paid to how the internet has transformed the organisation of women’s protest, why contemporary movements can exist without a single centre or formal membership, and how individual refusal can become a form of collective political action.