To commemorate International Women’s Day, UNFPA is profiling Professor Zheng Zhenzhen who spoke to us about her career path and research for population and development.
Professor Zheng works at the Institute of Population and Labour Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and her research areas cover gender and development, and demographic change.
The journey from electronics to demography
In the 1980s, I studied electronic engineering at the University of Science and Technology of China. Later, I got an opportunity to study abroad and enrolled in a programme on statistics, however I did not know what is “demography”. After returning to China in 1992, I entered the field of population studies, more or less by chance, which changed my lifetime career.
My encounter with gender and population research at the global platform
In 1994, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was held in Cairo, Egypt and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) supported 6 experts and scholars from China to participate. I was honoured to participate in the conference as a representative of the Population Research Institute of Peking University.
Following the Conference, I realized the critical role of individual needs played in population policy making.
I still have books and papers collected from the ICPD NGO forum, one of them, “Fundamental elements of the quality of care: a simple framework” was translated into Chinese and disseminated widely.
In 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, I participated in the NGO forums of the Conference. Inspired by these international conferences, I participated in the national evaluation of a pilot project on quality of care in family planning services, and witnessed the expansion of a human-centred approach to family planning nationwide.
From research to policy transformation
From 2006-2013, I and my colleagues carried out a survey on fertility intentions and fertility behaviour in Jiangsu Province. The questions the survey aimed to answer was whether women's actual fertility is consistent with their fertility preference and the role of fertility policy.
The survey findings showed that even when many women were allowed to have two children according to the regulation at that time, they chose not to have a second child. The survey findings proved that lifting the fertility policy would not lead to a newborn explosion. The study provided solid evidence for the introduction of the country’s “universal two-child policy” in 2015.
Earlier before that, I participated in research on the status of returned migrant rural women in Anhui and Sichuan Provinces. The conclusion was that migration, especially migration for work from rural to urban areas, had a positive impact on the development of rural women.
Joining hands for a better future for all
I see more young women scholars joining population studies, and an increasing cooperation and communication between population studies and women's studies.
In the past, there were barriers between different disciplines. But now the progress towards gender mainstreaming is accelerating, which in turn facilitates the development of population studies.
In my view, the investments in population policies have long-term consequences, they may take 10 to 20 years to achieve the intended goals. Demographic trends can hardly be reversed but predictable, including low fertility and population ageing.
But we must be prepared, including through comprehensive measures to enable women and families to have a range of reproductive choices and to be able to reconcile career development and family life.
