The visibility of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton notwithstanding, New Jersey's Community Affairs commissioner sees a "gender gap" in national politics that she called shocking and detrimental to the national debate.

"It's not a Democrat/Republican, or even a male/female issue," said Susan Bass Levin, speaking in Livingston on March 28. "When we have different voices around the table, when we all don't think alike or look alike or talk alike, you get a better result, whether in government or the business world."

"That's why I believe we need more women in the legislature," added Bass Levin, who served for three terms as mayor of Cherry Hill. "We need more women in the corporate boardroom."

Bass Levin offered her assessment at a program celebrating Women's History Month offered by the National Council of Jewish Women, Essex County Section.

She noted the absence of women in general in national government. Women hold 16 of the 100 seats in the Senate and 71 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. (New Jersey currently has no women serving in national office; see sidebar.)

She hailed the late Bella Abzug, the first Jewish woman to serve in Congress, as her idol for having the tenacity to make her own place on the political scene in the face of hostility and ambivalence. Bass Levin said that Abzug described herself as "having more complaints than Portnoy" (referring to the Philip Roth novel) but "used her complaints to call for change, and that's why she was so important."

Bass Levin cited her failed run for the NJ Legislature in 2000 as one of the luckiest things to happen to her because it opened a door that would not have been available otherwise.

In 2002, Gov. Jim McGreevey appointed her to his cabinet as Department of Community Affairs commissioner, a position she has held through three administrations.

Bass Levin paid tribute to the contributions of several women with NJ connections, including suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul; Sara Spencer Washington, an African-American entrepreneur who bought the Hotel Brigantine in Atlantic City in 1944 and turned it into the first integrated beachfront facility in that city; photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, who grew up in Bound Brook; and labor organizer Marietta Botto, an Italian immigrant who provided shelter for striking silk workers in Haledon in the early 1900s.

These women were from different faiths, backgrounds, and economic circumstances, Bass Levin said, "but they shared the common traits of courage and a refusal to quit until the job was done."

"These women – and many other women like them and like all of you – dedicated their lives to give a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless," Bass Levin said. "Even when they determined that…the goal was out of their reach, it would not be out of the reach of those who came next. That's what history is about: it's about making the way better for those who come after us."

A lifetime member of NCJW, she praised the organization for its history of advocacy and effectiveness in improving lives. She singled out the work of the Linda and Rudy Slucker NCJW Center for Women in Livingston, which received a grant in September of $115,000 from the Division on Women of the NJ Department of Community Affairs. The nonsectarian, nonprofit, multiservice community agency coordinates a variety of services and programs for women and their families.

"Think of the countless number of women and their families who have benefited from the center," she said.