‘Another iron lady’: Singaporeans remember Chan Choy Siong, the hawker’s daughter who helped outlaw polygamy

SINGAPORE: A social media post that paid tribute to Chan Choy Siong, one of Singapore’s pioneering women’s rights advocates, has received a lot of attention, with one netizen calling her “another iron lady that deserves recognition.”

The entrepreneur Joel Chue wrote about Ms Chan, one of the first women to be elected to Parliament, in a July 16 post that carried her image with a text that reads “the hawker’s daughter who forced Singapore to outlaw polygamy.”

Mr Chue noted Ms Chan’s humble beginnings, noting that while she had gone to Nanyang Girls’ High, her family did not have enough money to pay for further studies. 

In 1955, at the age of 23, she joined the People’s Action Party, and in the following year, co-founded the party’s Women’s League.

“Then came the (Women’s) Charter. A law to end polygamy. To outlaw child marriage. To put a wife on equal legal footing with her husband — property, divorce, protection. You’d think a bill like that would sail through. It didn’t. The resistance came from inside her own party. From men who didn’t want the rules changed.

So on April 6, 1960, she stood up in the Legislative Assembly and said this: ‘Women in our society are like pieces of meat put on the table for men to slice’,” wrote Mr Chue.

The Charter passed the following year. Ms Chan served as an Assemblywoman and Member of Parliament from 1959 to 1970, the year she retired from politics.

Mr Chue wrote that while the Charter is considered a win for the government, Ms Chan had been the driving force behind it, although, unlike her male colleagues, she never studied law or earned a degree.

“What she had was fury… (She) just refused to be told her anger wasn’t an argument. Conviction moved a room that credentials couldn’t,” he wrote.

Even if perhaps younger generations of Singaporeans no longer know Ms Chan and are unfamiliar with her contributions to society, like the post author, there are still many who remember her fondly.

“I recall she was one real feisty woman. This country needs more citizens like her,” a netizen wrote.

“Many thanks to this brave and courageous woman who had fought for women’s rights. If not for the women’s charters, many young girls will be forced into marriage, and pedophiles will be acceptable. Women will have to accept their husbands being shared with other mistresses,” another added.

“Women and their children are well served and protected by the Charter. Earned the respect in our multi-racial society ever since. Kudos to her,” wrote a third. /TISG

Read also: Singapore’s rich legacy of women MPs — on both sides of the House