Our View: Women's voices can inspire, captivate. It's time to listen.

If it was going to be somewhere, it had to be Nashville.

For the first time this year, Rubber News joined our sister publication Plastics News to present a conference dedicated to women and the value of their voices. And it's fitting that, in our inaugural year as a co-host of Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum, the program would be in Nashville—a city that relentlessly celebrates voices in their purest, most beautiful forms.

No matter the time of day, in Nashville, you'll hear those voices spilling from bars and restaurants along the Honky Tonk Highway or wafting through the lobbies of local hotels. Nashville itself—the entire city, from its green spaces to it parking garages—is a stage. And it's just waiting for someone to take the spotlight. To use their voice.

But here's the beautiful thing about music: It doesn't just need soloists. It needs background singers and harmonies—entire choirs.

And writers. People who put lyrics and poetry to the page, but maybe never perform the song for a crowd.

Music needs producers and technicians—people who know how and when to speak up and change course or put all the pieces together to ensure that the singer performs and sounds their absolute best. It needs managers and booking agents to be certain that the singers and performers are heard at the right time and in the right place.

Our industry is the same. Or at least it should be. Especially when it comes to lifting women's voices.

We need to ensure that women not only find their voices but also those places where it is most effective. Because women bring so much to the table—ideas and perspectives that are unique and so, so needed. And when they are empowered, they can do what they do best: Lead. Encourage. Inspire. Change.

Linda Muroski, this year's Rubber News Executive of the Year, knows exactly how women can inspire—through speech and action. Her grandmother, after all, had one of those voices—captivating in its sincerity and inspiring in its perseverance.

"She would tell me stories about marching in the 1920s for women's right to vote," Muroski told us. "When she was born, she did not have that right. Even her father said she wasn't allowed to work.

"Being an activist as she was way back in the 1920s? That amazes me. Now I look at 2022—and wonder what she is thinking."

Imagine the stories our industry could tell if we empower the women in it to find and use their voices, to lead like Muroski does and her grandmother did.

We're ready.

It's time to listen.

Ladies, the stage is yours.