Young female journalists in Austria’s journalists’ union: Part of the working poor?

In the last four decades, journalism has witnessed tremendous change. In Austria, this once highly organized profession has experienced rapid drops in union membership, with recent studies showing that only half of Austrian journalists are union members. The most notable changes have been the growing number of freelance and female journalists and the arrival of new kinds of media providers in an increasingly competitive market. Nonetheless, the union, which still represents the normative core for the field, is predominantly made up of well-paid and hugely influential men. This article uses empirical data collected by the University of Salzburg in 2010 and the field theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to explore inequalities between the sexes in the Austrian journalists’ union and discusses how women union members, in proximity to the normative core of the journalistic field, are struggling with lower wages, lower status in companies and little job security