The Washington Post’s chief film critic Ann Hornaday sat down with “The Post” movie director Steven Spielberg and cast members Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Bob Odenkirk and Bradley Whitford, to discuss the film – the first movie Meryl Streep and Spielberg worked on together. In it, Streep plays former Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham, and in the middle of the interview, she talked about gender inequality at work and how there are more men than women in positions. She went on to expound on the idea that women have learned the language of men through years of adapting and adjusting, but men never really spoke the linguistics of women. Streep’s response was indeed a nudge to the long-enduring struggle of women not only in the film industry but in any workplace. It is evident in the pay disparity, the number of men versus women employed in a company, and the unending stories of harassment and abuse.

On gender equality: Part of this whole conversation is that these are issues with which every woman is aware. We are all aware of it, and all men are not aware. So, this is—it’s hard to have the whole thing. And the fact of that phalanx of faces that is so not diverse, it feels weird to me, looking at it now. It’s like women have learned the language of men, have lived in the house of men, all their lives. We can speak it. You know how when you learn a language, you learn French, you learn Spanish, it doesn’t really – it isn’t your language until you dream in it. And the only way to dream in it is to speak it, and women speak men. But men don’t speak women. They don’t dream in it.