Thio Su Mien
Thio Su Mien was a Singaporean legal academic and lawyer. She served as the dean of the National [University of Singapore Faculty of Law|Faculty of Law] at the University of Singapore from 1968 to 1971, being the first woman to hold this position. Educated at the University of Malaya, she remained with the university as an educator after her graduation, eventually rising to the position of dean.
Thio left academia in 1971 and worked in private practice at Drew & Napier before founding her own firm, Thio Su Mien & Partners, in 1998. In 2009, she co-led a group of women attending the right-wing Church of Our Saviour that took over the executive council of the Association of Women for Action and Research ; however, they were removed through a motion of no confidence.
Early life and career
Thio was born in 1938 to Reverend Huang Yang Ying, the founding principal of the Anglican High School. She had her early education at Anglo-Chinese School and graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Malaya in 1961, and was subsequently admitted to the Bar in 1963 by Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin. She also had a PhD from the London School of Economics. After her graduation, Thio remained at the University of Malaya to teach at the faculty. In 1968, she was promoted to Vice-Dean after succeeding Tommy Koh. She was subsequently made dean of the faculty, making her the seventh dean of the faculty since its establishment in 1959, the youngest and the only woman to hold the post. She served from 1969 to 1971, before resigning that year from academia to work in private practice; she was succeeded by Koh.In the 1980s, Thio became a partner at the Singaporean law firm Drew & Napier, eventually serving as a managing partner of the firm. She left the firm in 1998 as its head of its banking and corporate department. She subsequently founded the law firm Thio Su Mien & Partners; it is now run as TSMP Law Corporation by her son and daughter-in-law, Thio Shen Yi and Stefanie Yuen-Thio. Thio also served as a judge on the administrative tribunals of the World Bank Group and Asian Development Bank.
Takeover of AWARE
On 8 March 2009, a group of women attending the right-wing Church of Our Saviour took over the executive council of the Association of Women for Action and Research, a non-governmental organization in Singapore promoting gender equality. Led by Josie Lau and Thio, they alleged that AWARE was harbouring and pushing a "pro-gay agenda". Six of the 11 newly elected councillors were church members who had only joined the group three months prior to the election. 120 members of AWARE attended, while usual attendance was around 30; of the 120 attendees, 80 were new members who had also joined via the church. In defending the new council, Thio called herself its "feminist mentor". The old guard initiated a motion of no confidence and the new council was voted out of office on 2 May 2009. Of the 2,175 people who voted on the motion, 1,414 voted for it.When queried by the media, Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng commented, "A group of conservative Christians, all attending the same church, which held strong views on homosexuality, had moved in and taken over AWARE because they disapproved of what AWARE had been doing." He called for tolerance and the separation of religion and politics.
Personal life
Thio was married to Thio Gim Hock, former chairperson of OUE Limited and Olympic water polo player, until his death in 2020; they had three children, Thio Li-Ann, Thio Shen Yi, and Thio Chi Ann.Thio was a Christian. In 2004, she reportedly blamed the 2003 SARS outbreak in Singapore on its stance on abortion, and asserted that prayers for mercy and forgiveness had prevented Singapore from being affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. She also wrote a book called Adventures in the Lord.