In recent years, in feminist media studies there has been a growing interest in in media production processes, the structures of media organizations and the people working ‘behind the scenes’ of these companies. This research has documented that despite the increase of female journalists in the last decades, journalism remains vertically and horizontally divided along gender lines. Female journalists are strongly under-represented in older age groups, in decision-making positions and in prestigious news areas and media sectors. Although the blending of qualitative and quantitative methods can offer a fuller understanding of the mechanisms sustaining gender inequality in journalism, most studies either quantify the representation of women in journalism or use qualitative methods to explore how female journalists experience these barriers. The purpose of this paper is to fill the lack of multi-method research on gender inequality in journalism. In order to gain insight into the structural position of women in the journalistic workforce, we conducted a large-scale survey in Belgium. All active professional journalists were invited to participate. The response rate was 33.4% (1640 of 4913 journalists). These results are explored more in depth by means of qualitative interviews with 21 female journalists. The analysis confirms the existence of all ‘traditional’ barriers that women experience in the journalistic profession (e.g. the incompatibility of journalism and motherhood, the glass ceiling, sexism, …). The added value of this study is that we registered several additional difficulties for women in journalism, and most importantly that we gained insight in the strategies that our respondents use to deal with these gender-related barriers. These strategies were related to the support of a partner, the flexibility in the newsroom towards journalists with children, the choice to work part-time or freelance and the use of new communication technologies.