page_title: Thung Sin Nio
section_title: Medical practice and activism
hierarchical_section_title: Thung Sin Nio / Career / Medical practice and activism
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Repronegatief. Kramat- Salemba, Batavia
context_page_description: Betsy Thung Sin Nio 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.
context_section_description: After graduating in medicine in 1938, Thung returned to Batavia and on 13  September opened a private practice catering to women and children in her family home in the Salemba neighborhood. Modeling a child care course on those she had encountered in the Netherlands, Thung held classes for mothers, undertaking regular health checks on their children. Simultaneously, she published articles advocating for women's suffrage and about women's issues in magazines such as Fu Nu Tsa Chih; Fu Len (Chinese: 妇人), founded by Ong Pik Hwa (Chinese: 王碧华); Maandblad Istri, a Sino-Malay publication founded by Kwee Yat Nio (better known as Mrs. Tjoa Hin Hoeij); and the newspaper Sin Po (Chinese: 新报). Her articles in Maandblad Istri, on whose board she served, typically provided medical advice on child care and nutrition or addressed education for women.
  Though Thung was a member of the Association for Women's Interests and Equal Citizenship in the Netherlands, the affiliate Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht in Nederlands Indie (Association for Women's Suffrage in the Dutch East Indies) in reaction to nationalist aims of Indonesian women, pursued enfranchisement only for European women. Thung joined the Chung Hwa Fu Nu Hui (Chinese Women's Association), founded in 1938 and set up the Hutspot-club (Hodge-Podge Club) which provided opportunities for women from different classes and ethnic backgrounds to engage with each other. She was active on the committee to seek the vote for Chinese women and opposed the government's 1940 proposal to withhold the vote from non-Europeans. Collecting "thousands of signatures", Thung and other women protested the proposal. 
  In 1941, an amendment was proposed by another woman physician, Mrs. J. Ch. Neuyen-Hakker, to the Volksraad (the colonial legislature) which advocated granting the right to vote and hold office to educated women of any race under the same terms as men. To counter the argument that women did not actually want the right to vote, Neuyen-Hakker proposed that women's registration be left to their individual choice to register. The proposal was accepted by the Volksraad and approved by the government in November 1941. That year, Thung also participated in the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the First Chinese Girls' Boarding School and the fifth-anniversary of the school's creation of a professional trade school for women.
  The following year, when the Japanese invaded Java and interred all the European physicians in 1943, Thung opened a private clinic, San Te Ie Juen to provide medical service to the upper classes. She continued her own private practice and did volunteer work at a local hospital for the duration of World War II. In 1945, when nationalists declared Indonesian independence, Batavia was renamed Jakarta. From 1945 to 1951, Thung was employed by the Ministry of Education to monitor the health of all of the school children in the city. She measured the height and weight of students for the Institute for Public Nutrition and monitored the milk supplements and food provided by the schools to ensure that they were provided in accordance with UNESCO standards.
caption: Salemba, Batavia circa 1940
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