Faculty Spotlight: Özge Özay

Biography

Özge Özay was born and grew up in Türkiye. She completed her undergraduate degree in Economics from Middle East Technical University in 1999. Özge went on to earn her PhD in Economics from University of Utah in 2010. Both her undergraduate and graduate education went beyond mainstream approaches to incorporate inequality with respect to gender, race, class, and other social locators.

Growing up in Türkiye and witnessing the social results of major transformations in trade and economic regimes occurring in the 1990s, she became interested in studying the relationship between these broad influences and the social movements they produced. Over time, her work increasingly focused on the impacts of macroeconomic shifts and changes in international trade regimes on gendered and racialized labor markets. The common thread in all her work is examining how gender, race and class interact to shape economic outcomes in both developed and developing economies.

After completing her graduate work, Özge worked in several universities across Türkiye and the United States including American University in Washington DC. Özge joined Fitchburg State University in 2016. She is currently a Full Professor in the Economics Department, having been promoted in September 2025. She teaches a variety of courses including Money and Banking, Political Economy of Gender, and Fed Challenge, across all of which she prioritizes experiential learning with real-world applications.

Özge's research examines the gendered and racial impacts of macroeconomic shifts and transformations and labor market dynamics. Her work on time poverty in Türkiye contributed to the Routledge International Handbook of Time Use Research (2026), and her intersectional analysis of COVID-19's labor market effects was published in the Journal of Economics, Race and Policy (2020). She has also published in top heterodox economics journals including Structural Change and Economic Dynamics. She regularly presents her research at conferences including International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) and Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA).

Özge currently lives in Lowell, Massachusetts with her husband, stepdaughter, and their cat, Tarçın.

 

Publications

 

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

“Riding the Tide or Left Behind? Intersectional Unemployment Gap in the Post-Pandemic U.S.” Revise and Resubmit (Major Revision) at Feminist Economics, (2026) (with Armagan Gezici). (not published at time of posting)

“An Intersectional Analysis of COVID-19 Unemployment,” Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, (2020) (with Armagan Gezici). DOI: 10.1007/s41996-020-00075-w

“Changing Structure of Exports and Product Sophistication in the East and Southeast Asian Region,” The International Trade Journal, (2018) (with Emel Memis). DOI: 10.1080/08853908.2018.1445050

“Is Capital Deepening Process Male-Biased?” Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (indexed in SSCI), (2015). DOI: 10.1016/j.strueco.2015.09.002

“Implications of Trade Policy Changes on Gender Inequalities,” Feminist Critique (indexed in EBSCO), Ankara University Press (2011).

 

Working Papers

“How Race and Gender Shape COVID-19 Unemployment Probability,” UMASS Political Economy Research Institute, (2020) (with Armagan Gezici). https://peri.umass.edu/?view=article&id=1324:how-race-and-gender-shape-covid-19-unemployment-probability&catid=153

 

Book Chapters and Books

“Women’s Time Poverty in Turkey,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Time Use Themes and Applications (Time Use Research, Volume 2), edited by Michael Bittman and Oriel Sullivan, Routledge. (forthcoming in 2026).

“Women’s Labor Supply Adjustment to the COVID-19 Shock: An Intersectional Analysis,” in Gender Inequality in the Global Labor Market: A Feminist Economics Approach, with A. Gezici, edited by Reyna Elizabeth Rodriguez Perez and David Castro, Routledge (2024). DOI: 10.4324/9781003437505-8

“Expanding Understanding of Poverty: Time Poverty Revealed Time-Use Data,” in Harnessing Time-Use Data for Evidence-based Policy, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Beijing Platform for Action: A Resource for Data Analysis, United Nations ESCAP (2021).

“From Domestic Activities to Unpaid Labor,” (in Turkish) in Women Studies in Turkey: 1975-2011, edited by S. Sancar, Koc University Press (2011) (with Emel Memis).

“Unpaid Work,” (in Turkish) entry in Dictionary of Economic Institutions and Concepts, edited by Fikret Başkaya and Aydın Ördek (2011) (with Emel Memis and Hande Togrul).

Gender Inequalities, Capital Deepening and Trade in Turkey’s Manufacturing Industry: 1990-2001, VDM (Verlag Dr. Müller), Germany, 2010.