Betsy Thung Sin Nio (Chinese: 汤新娘; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Thng Sin-niû; pinyin: Tāng Xīnniáng; 22 May 1902 – 5 January 1996) was an Indonesian-Dutch women's rights activist, physician, economist and politician. Born into a wealthy and progressive Peranakan family of the Cabang Atas gentry in Batavia, she was encouraged to obtain an education, which was unusual for Indonesian women at the time. After completing high school, she qualified as a bookkeeper, but – because social norms prevented women from doing office work – she became a teacher. After teaching briefly in an elementary school, in 1924 Thung enrolled at the Netherlands School of Business in Rotterdam to study economics. On graduating, she went on to earn a master's degree and a doctorate in economics. In 1932, she enrolled at the University of Amsterdam to pursue her medical studies.
During her schooling in the Netherlands, Thung met Aletta Jacobs who encouraged her to become involved in the Dutch women's movement and the Association for Women's Interests and Equal Citizenship. She became an activist for improved socio-economic and civil status of women, writing articles for feminist journals in both the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. After completing her degree in 1938, Thung returned to Batavia and opened a medical practice focusing on the health needs of women and children. She continued her feminist involvement and fought for women's suffrage. When the government proposed only European women be given the vote and the right to stand in elections, she campaigned successfully to secure voting rights for educated women regardless of their race.
During World War II, Thung continued her private practice, volunteered at a local public hospital and opened a private hospital to treat European patients. When the war ended, she became a medical officer for the school system in Jakarta and entered local politics. She was elected as the first woman member of the Municipal Council of Jakarta in 1949, representing the Persatuan Tionghoa. From 1949 to 1965, she traveled abroad on numerous occasions on behalf of her country. She served as a translator for trade delegations and as an economist on fact-finding missions to Russia and China. Following the 1965 Indonesian coup d'état and the turn away from communism, she was released from government work. In 1968, when assimilationist policies were introduced to force Chinese citizens to take Indonesian names, Thung permanently immigrated to the Netherlands, where she continued to work as a physician. She formally sought naturalization in 1972 and in 1983 was knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau. She is remembered in China, Indonesia and the Netherlands for her social activism on behalf of women and children.
Thung Sin Nio was born on 22 May 1902 in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, to the landowner and community leader Thung Bouw Kiat (1863–1916) and his wife, Tan Toan Nio (1865–1919), into a family of the Cabang Atas gentry, originally from Buitenzorg (now Bogor), a hill station in West Java. Her father, Thung Bouw Kiat, was the elder brother of Thung Tjoen Ho, Luitenant der Chinezen of Buitenzorg from 1895 until 1911; a nephew by marriage of Phoa Tjeng Tjoan, Kapitein der Chinezen of Buitenzorg from 1866 until 1878; and a maternal great-grandnephew of Tan Oe Ko, Kapitein der Chinezen of Buitenzorg from 1829 until 1860. The Chinese officership, consisting of the ranks of Luitenant, Kapitein and Majoor der Chinezen, was a high-ranking government position in the civil bureaucracy of the Dutch East Indies, part of the colony's system of indirect rule. Thung's paternal family had migrated to West Java from the Hua'an County of Fujian, China, at the start of the nineteenth century; while her paternal grandmother's Tan lineage went back to the Chinese scholar-gentry of the fourteenth century, and had been established as community leaders in West Java since the eighteenth century.
Thung's mother, Tan Toan Nio, was an elder sister of the rice mill owner Tan Kiat Tjay and the bureaucrat Tan Kiat Goan, Luitenant der Chinezen of Tjilakoe, West Java. Through her maternal uncle Tan Kiat Tjay, Thung was a first cousin of the paleontologist Tan Sin Hok (1902–1945), to whom she was engaged for a time by prior family arrangement.
Thung's father managed a plantation and sat for several years as a member of the Gemeenteraad (Municipal Council) of Batavia, a body to which Thung would also be elected in time. Belonging to one of the 10 wealthiest, Chinese-Indonesian families, her progressive parents encouraged their daughter to study, which – though unusual in the general community at the time – reflected a trend for westernized modernity among the Cabang Atas. Members of her extended family had been pioneers and promoters of higher education, including her father's first cousin, the prominent social activist Phoa Keng Hek (1857–1937, son of Kapitein Phoa Tjeng Tjoan); and their distant cousin, the colony's first university-educated, Chinese-Indonesian engineer, Ir. Tan Tjoen Liang (1862–1923, like Thung's father, another great-grandnephew of Kapitein Tan Oe Ko).
Her privileged and progressive background allowed her to attend Dutch-medium schools, including Prins Hendrik School, where she passed her final examinations in 1918. As a woman, with few options to continue her education, she qualified as a bookkeeper at the Handelsschool (business school) in 1920. That year, her mother died, and as her father had died in 1916, she went to live in western Java in Cianjur with an aunt. Though she had a degree, a woman of her social class was not allowed to do office work. Instead, she spent her time sewing, cooking, reading and occasionally being allowed to go out under the supervision of a chaperone.
Unsatisfied, Thung returned to school 1922, studying in Jatinegara at the Hollandsch Chineesche Kweekschool (Dutch-Chinese Teachers' College). She earned a teaching certificate in 1924 and then taught briefly at the private Hollandsch Chineesche School (Dutch Elementary School for the Chinese) of Bogor. Wanting to continue her education, Thung decided to go abroad and enrolled at the Nederlandsche Handels-Hoogeschool (Netherlands School of Business), on 15 October 1924, where she studied economics with Willemijn Posthumus-van der Goot. For her birthday in 1926, fellow students gave her a copy of Herinneringen (Memories) by Aletta Jacobs. After writing to the author to express her enthusiasm, Thung was invited to visit Jacobs, who introduced her to Kee Groot and other feminists. She joined the Vereniging voor Vrouwenbelangen en Gelijk Staatsburgerschap (Association for Women's Interests and Equal Citizenship) and became an active campaigner for changes to the legal statutes for matrimonial property and employment.
Thung joined the Chinese student association, Chung Hwa Hui (Chinese: 中華會) and served on its board during 1926 and 1927. She gave several lectures at Chung Hwa Hui on feminist issues, like Het een en ander over de Chinese meisjes in Indonesie (Notes on Chinese Girls' Education in Indonesia) in 1926 and two years later a talk Het Montessori Onderwijs (The Montessori Education), on the innovative teaching methods used by Maria Montessori. On graduating in 1927, Thung went on to earn a master's degree the following year. She then traveled in Europe with her sisters before returning home. In December 1929, Thung returned to Batavia aboard the M.S. Indrapoera to attend her sister, Eng Nio's wedding.
Early career and additional schooling
In 1930, Thung began working as a physician's assistant and social worker at the Yang Seng Ie Hospital (Chinese: 養生院; now Rumah Sakit Husada), founded by doctor Kwa Tjoan Sioe. She worked with women from the poorest neighborhoods of Batavia who were suffering from malnutrition, poverty, and venereal diseases. She also participated in clinics for infants, instructing women in child care and birth control. While continuing her work with the physician, Thung founded the First Chinese Girls' Boarding School in the upscale neighborhood of Welgelegen. Serving as its director, and with an all-female staff, she strove to overcome the resistance of Chinese parents to educating their daughters. After spending a year and a half in Batavia, she returned to Rotterdam where she completed her doctorate in economics in 1932.