David Gelles's Book 'Mindful Work' Reveals How Meditation Can Revolutionize Your Workplace Happiness

The following is an excerpt from David Gelles's Mindful Work. In the book, Gelles discusses how meditation could be the key to happiness in the workplace. Exploring examples of effective mindfulness employed by businesses large and small, he shows how lower stress levels lead not only to employee satisfaction, but to productive workflow.

Right around the time I began hearing about mindfulness at work, and plotting my trip to visit Janice Marturano at General Mills, I got a promotion. This was back when I worked at the Financial Times; after I had been covering media for a few years, my editor asked me to become the paper’s sole mergers and acquisitions reporter in the United States. It was a big offer, but I was reluctant to accept it at first. I enjoyed covering media and felt as if I was just hitting my stride. There was also the reality that covering M&A is notoriously competitive. Reporters on that beat are expected to be on call 24/7 and often work Sundays, chasing the deals that might break on so-called Merger Mondays. And in the United States, the FT was outmatched, competing against large teams of reporters at the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Nonetheless, it was a great opportunity to take on a prominent beat, and I accepted the job, even as I expected that the stress would be immense. I was right.

The job, instantly, was overwhelming. For the first three months I had breakfast meetings, lunches, and after-work drinks on top of long days at the office. Anytime a deal broke, or was even rumored, I was expected to match the story or take it forward. It was exhausting, and I noticed my stress levels ratcheting up. Luckily, I knew what to do. Though mindfulness works best as a preventive medicine, it can also prove an effective remedy. And after a few intense weeks of M&A reporting, I sensed it was time to recommit to meditation.

Though I had practiced mindfulness on and off for almost fifteen years, I had gone all that time without ever trying out what is probably the most popular form of meditation training today: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. MBSR, more than any other class, curriculum, or teacher in the last thirty years, has helped mindfulness go mainstream. As a reporter, I had to figure out what it was all about. And at a personal level, reducing my stress level sounded pretty good, too. My job was more intense than ever, and I was trying to write a book on the side. With this kind of a schedule, I figured I could use all the mindfulness I could get. So with stresses at work mounting, I signed up for my inaugural training in MBSR. I even managed to convince my wife, Alison (never much of a meditator herself but often the most considerate person in the family), to join as well.

It was a difficult time for us. In addition to our busy work lives, we had just suffered a personal blow: Alison had had a miscarriage, and we were reeling, trying to process a complex flood of emotions. Like Marturano when she went off to the desert and learned from Jon Kabat-Zinn, we were personally and professionally depleted. And yet I knew I needed to renew my practice, and Alison intuited that mindfulness would help her heal. Which is how it came to be that at 8:30 p.m. on a Thursday evening, after a long day at work, while our friends were dining out or going to a show, we were at our first MBSR class, staring at a raisin.

We were at the Open Center, a New Age mecca in the shadow of the Empire State Building. We had entered through the gift shop, an incense-scented store hawking biodynamic brown rice wraps and crystals. We hustled through and made our way upstairs to a large classroom, where we took our seats in a big circle, along with twenty-eight other professionals from across Manhattan.

My butt was planted on an uncomfortable metal folding chair. The room we were in, a large space with double-high ceilings and big windows facing north onto the bustling streets, had seen better days. The mauve carpet was stained, and a fluorescent ceiling light flickered. It wasn’t the most soothing environment, but then, mindfulness asks that we be at peace even in uncomfortable situations. From down the hall, squawks from a Native American flute class pierced the air. And while my classmates were all there of their own volition, there was definitely some trepidation in the air. An introduction to mindfulness, it turned out, can be a cause for stress.

Our teacher for the eight-week course was Amy Gross, the former editor of O magazine, the print arm of Oprah Winfrey’s media empire. A compact woman with smooth features, a bushel of dark hair, and warm eyes, Amy did her best to make the group feel welcome in an admittedly awkward environment. Everyone seemed to know things were going to get intense, but no one knew quite what to expect. But I figured we were in good hands. Because she had worked with Oprah for years, I suspected Amy knew a thing or two about stress at work. And after dispensing with some formalities and doing a round of introductions, she got down to business.

Eager as I was to learn MBSR, it was a challenge to be fully present. I’d just had an intense day at the office, full of rolling deadlines, screaming editors, anxious colleagues, and evasive sources. I was still thinking about the story I’d just filed, which would be posted online any minute. The turmoil from the miscarriage continued to demand my emotional attention. Even though I was sitting down, I could feel the momentum of the day still trying to carry me along, as if I had just stepped onto solid ground after hours on a train. And now, a half-hour into the first class, we were staring at a raisin, which was supposed to be the object of our attention for the next ten minutes or so.

Amy told us to examine the raisin in our palm as if we’d never seen such a thing before, as if it were an alien object that magically appeared from another planet. Consider it anew, she said, with all five senses. We began with sight. What did it resemble? A rock? A piece of bark from a tree? The skin of an elephant? I examined the small pebble of dried fruit, noting the contradictions in its form. It had sharp ridges covering its globular body. Between its creases were flecks of a dried white substance, the sugar from its evaporated juices, clinging to its shriveled flesh.

Next: sound. What noise does a raisin make? None, I figured. Bringing it close to my ear, I squeezed gently. In fact, I could hear a small crackling. Turns out raisins have a voice, after all. It was a delightful little surprise that brought a smile to my face. Now touch. It was tough yet supple, sticky yet dry. Its nib, once connected to a small stem, was almost sharp, capable of leaving a small scratch on my skin. It weighed almost nothing, yet had a distinct volume between my index finger and thumb.

Smell. These weren’t the freshest raisins, and there wasn’t much fragrance coming from their small bodies. Nonetheless, when I brought it very close to my nose, nearly shoving it up my nostril, I caught a faint whiff of sweetness. And that little smell was enough to set my mouth salivating.

Finally: taste. I bit off a third of the raisin. Immediately my taste buds lit up, more saliva flooding around my gums. Though small, the little piece released enough flavor to dominate all my other senses. All the while, Amy asked us to also monitor what thoughts or feelings, likes and dislikes, the raisin elicited. Was I disappointed by its lack of freshness? Annoyed by the stickiness? Left salivating after smelling food? Did I notice the impulse to eat the raisin? Could I be aware of the intention to place it in my mouth before I actually made the motion to do so? Finally, when it was time to swallow the piece I’d chewed, could I feel the muscles in my throat impulsively moving before I followed through with the action?

The purpose of the exercise was twofold. Bringing our full attention to the raisin made it clear how much richer even mundane experiences can be when we are fully present. This is true of everything, from brushing our teeth to walking down the street. Every moment of our lives, there is a lot going on that we fail to notice.

The second intention was subtler. By encouraging us to examine our impulses, emotions, and desires, Amy was, with a few baby steps, helping us cultivate self-awareness. Instead of simply eating the raisin on autopilot, we were putting just a little space between our preconceptions about eating the raisin and the act itself. We were not just noticing the sensations of the experience, but also becoming aware that we were having an experience in the first place.

Though I ate that raisin a long time ago, I still remember each detail of it vividly. That’s the power of mindfulness. For those few minutes I was so engrossed in the totality of the raisin, no other thoughts were distracting me from the present moment. As a result, the shriveled grape remains among the most memorable meals of my life. And the lesson from MBSR is simple: we can bring that same clarity, purpose, and self-awareness to all our experiences.

Excerpt from MINDFUL WORK by David Gelles. Copyright © 2015 by David Gelles. Used by permission of Eamon Dolan Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

One Small Hope For The Future Of Maternity Leave In The U.S.

The U.S. is woefully behind the rest of the industrialized world on maternity leave policies, and the country’s top politicians can’t seem to do much about it.

Yet progress could be on the way from a pretty unlikely source: The world’s biggest corporations.

Vodafone announced late last week that it would offer a minimum of 16 weeks of paid leave to new mothers in all 30 countries in which the telecommunications giant operates. Even more groundbreaking: The company will let returning mothers work 30-hour weeks and still get full-time pay and benefits for the first six months they’re back at work.

This benefit is particularly generous in the United States. It's also a sign that Europe's more progressive family leave policies are making their way across the pond, offering hope that we’re slowly raising the bar on worker benefits. The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world that doesn’t require businesses to give new mothers paid time off, though most big companies do offer some paid leave.

Like most big multinationals, Vodafone tailors its leave policies to local law. That means in Europe, where paid leave is the norm, the company is already offering very generous leave benefits for mothers. On its home turf in the U.K., Vodafone workers get six months off at full pay -- local laws provide for 280 days of leave, with the first six weeks at 90 percent of pay. (See the chart below.) The company's new 16-week policy won’t change that, but will benefit more than 1,000 Vodafone workers in places -- the U.S., Africa, India and the Middle East -- that offer very little or no paid leave, the company said in a statement.

Vodafone employs about 93,000 people, more than 500 of whom work in the U.S.

Corporations with workers in different parts of the world can’t offer generous leave policies in one place and terrible leave policies in the U.S., Kenneth Matos, senior direct of research at the nonprofit Families and Work Institute, told HuffPost. “Logic eventually wins,” he said.

If enough workers start getting better leave benefits, eventually cultural expectations will shift and U.S. policy will improve, Matos said.

The inspiration for Vodafone's new policy came from Italy, where workers already enjoy a flexible return-to-work policy that lets them put in 30 hours a week and still receive full pay for up to the first year back.

The benefit, Vodafone believes, translates into fewer new mothers quitting the company. Globally, 65 percent of new mothers who quit Vodafone leave within the first year of returning, the company's human resources director, Sharon Doherty, told The Huffington Post. It's a sign that the transition back to work was too challenging, she said. But in Italy, fewer new mothers quit their jobs during the crucial first year.

Doherty had been looking across the company to see how it could increase its percentage of women. Women make up 35 percent of Vodafone workers, but only 21 percent of the senior leadership team.

A light bulb went off.

“The government-enforced policy [in Italy] was changing the dynamics. That got us to think about it a little differently,” said Doherty. She has a 2-year-old at home and had taken six months of paid leave from Vodafone in the U.K.

One thing Vodafone didn’t import from Italy, however: the country's very long maternity leave benefit. Italian Vodafone workers get 9 and 1/2 months of paid leave.

The company isn’t saying much about how it landed on 16 weeks as its minimum standard for leave, and paternity leave will still be country by country.

Indeed, there’s no consensus on how much maternity leave time is ideal, but there is plenty of research that offers some clear guidance. Numerous studies show that offering less than six weeks of leave harms both mothers and infants, said Sharon Lerner, a senior fellow at Demos and the author of The War On Moms. One well-regarded study, which looked at infant mortality rates and leave among European woman, suggested that 40 weeks of leave offers the most benefits to a child’s health.

Vodafone's Doherty sold the enhanced benefits package to senior leadership by making a strong business case for it -- better leave policy translates to fewer women leaving the company. That saves Vodafone the cost of recruiting and re-training new employees. Senior management, already tasked with bringing on more women, was sold.

Not all companies can make that case. Smaller employers, particularly ones with more female workers, wouldn’t financially benefit from these generous policies, said Eileen Appelbaum, a senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a progressive think tank.

Large companies can afford to offer paid leave because the cost of losing one worker can be shared by many employees -- and is lower than the cost of replacing a worker who doesn’t return after having a baby, she said. The calculus is very different for an employer with a higher percentage of female workers and a smaller workforce.

“It’s great that Vodafone is doing this, but this isn’t the way to go in general,” she said.

Instead, Appelbaum said, the government should step up. In an ideal scenario, all workers would share the costs of mandated family leave via a payroll tax. For example, in New Jersey, workers contribute one-tenth of 1 percent out of their weekly pay to fund paid leave, Appelbaum said. Other states could copy this type of strategy.

“Paid leave is cheap. It’s ridiculous that every state doesn’t have it," she said.

Clarification: Language has been changed to clarify that U.K. workers get 90 percent of their pay for the first six weeks of their maternity leave.

Everything You Need To Know About The Apple Watch

You can put the Apple Watch on your wrist April 10.

That's according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who stepped on stage Monday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco to unveil the final details about the wearable device, which was first announced back in September. April 10 is the preorder date and the first day you'll be able to try the Watch on in an Apple Store. The product will be available to own April 24.

The most basic version of the watch, Apple Watch Sport, will start at $349 for the 38mm watch face. The 42mm face is priced at $399. Upgrading to the stainless steel version takes the starting price to $549. Finally, the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition starts at $10,000.

"It's not just with you, it's on you," Cook said of the new gadget.

The Apple Watch's basic features haven't changed since it was first announced in September, but Kevin Lynch, Apple's vice president of technology, went through highlights Monday. We've got the details here.

Keep in mind that for many of the features to work, the Apple Watch needs to be paired with an iPhone 5 (or later) running the latest version of iOS 8.

Here's a recap of the Apple Watch's features:

Fitness

A big draw for the Apple Watch is its suite of health and activity trackers. The built-in Activity app shows you how many calories you've burned in a day, how much exercise you've gotten, and how much you've stood up. It offers goal-tracking for each.

Credit: Apple

The device will also show you a weekly summary of your activity every Monday, and it will offer suggestions to improve your fitness in those reports. Its built-in heart sensor helps keep track of your exercise during workouts. It's water-resistant (not waterproof), so you don't have to worry about destroying it with all of your technology-enabled sweating.

Finally, outside of the basic information in the Activity app, there's a Workout app that will keep tabs on the nitty-gritty: total distance when running, average pace and so on. When you achieve personal milestones, the Fitness app will display an achievement badge on the screen, perhaps in a bid to make rigorous physical activity feel more like an Xbox game.

Glances

Important information is just a glance away on the Apple Watch. Use your finger to swipe up from the bottom of the watch face and you can check the weather, look at your calendar, control your music or check your heart rate.

Apps

It's always been clear that Apple Watch would support apps made by third-party developers. On Monday, Apple showcased a few examples and announced that they can be downloaded via a connected iPhone. Apple Watch supports WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app, and Uber, which now lets you summon a ride straight from your wrist. An app from the W hotel will allow users to unlock their hotel room using the Apple Watch by holding it up to a "lock pad near the door handle."

Siri

Everyone's favorite digital assistant is on the watch, because of course it is. Apple Watch owners will be able to say, "Hey, Siri" into their devices and then ask for turn-by-turn directions or information about upcoming events. Siri will also allow you to dictate text messages to contacts simply by speaking into your Apple Watch.

The "Taptic Engine"

Apple Watch will tap you on the wrist when you receive a notification. Cook said Monday that any notification you get on your iPhone will be viewable on the Apple Watch.

If you want walking directions, for example, it will tap you when it's time to turn. Apple says it will provide a different "tactile sensation" depending on the alert.

It will also allow you to tap other Apple Watch wearers or share your heartbeat with them, which Apple characterizes as "simple and intimate," rather than a sobering example of mankind's inexorable march toward technological singularity.

Credit: Apple

A Screen You Can Draw On

Texting is great and all, but Apple Watch owners will be able to communicate with one another by drawing on the device's screen. The doodles will be animated, illustrating how they were drawn, and then they'll vanish from the display.

That may seem a bit inconsequential, but you might have said the same thing about Snapchat's short, self-destructing messages -- and that company is valued at $19 billion now.

Credit: Apple

Instant Messages

When you get a text message on your iPhone, the Apple Watch will be able to display it on your wrist and offer you quick ways to respond based on "the context of your message," like if someone is asking you to meet for coffee at 2 p.m. Those responses can be along the lines of, "Leaving now," or they could simply be an animated emoji.

The Apple Watch also lets you see new email messages, of course.

Phone Calls On Your Wrist

Unlike certain competitors -- like the Moto 360 smartwatch for Android -- Apple Watch allows you to answer incoming calls and have a conversation straight from your wrist, using the device's speaker and microphone. (The Moto 360 allows you to answer calls with the watch, but you have to speak into your actual phone.)

Different Watch Faces

Mickey Mouse watches are classic, and now you can have a modern version on your wrist, thanks to Apple's different watch faces.

The wide array of face options includes an astronomy-themed faceh showing the planets, a minimalistic analog display and many more.

Battery

The Apple Watch powers up via a magnetic charger on its back, and Cook said it will last for 18 hours.

***

Cook's announcement capped off weeks of speculation that turned the invitation to the event into a news item itself. Anticipation for the gadget, and its success or failure, reached a fever pitch following a new 12-page advertisement in Vogue, a cover image for Self magazine and rumors about how it could shift the company's strategy for its Apple Stores.

The Apple Watch is the company's first foray into a new product category under Tim Cook, who became Apple's CEO when Steve Jobs stepped down in 2011. It follows a record-setting, $18 billion quarter for the Cupertino tech giant.

Apple now faces the challenge of getting people to buy the wearable, which could be perceived as little more than a luxury item complementing the technology one already owns. The $10,000 gold variation of the Apple Watch, also announced Monday, does little to dispel that notion. Industry experts seem split on whether anyone will want it, though some have reminded readers that the iPhone was met with similar skepticism upon its announcement.

The Consumer Electronics Association has estimated that 10.8 million smartwatches will be sold in 2015 -- about 14 percent of the number of iPhones Apple sold in the last three months of 2014 alone.

Gender Is Actually Very Relevant In Tech, Despite What Marissa Mayer Says

Gender isn’t an issue in the tech industry, according to one of the top women in the tech industry. However, there's quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.

“There are probably industries where gender is more of an issue,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a recent interview with Backchannel, publishing platform Medium’s tech industry site, “but our industry is not one where I think that’s relevant.”

Mayer, who's been hesitant in the past to declare herself a feminist, was speaking from a personal perspective. Some have claimed that Mayer's male colleagues are spared some of the criticisms leveled against her management style, simply because people are less comfortable with a woman exhibiting many of the traits it takes to run a major company. Her short discourse on gender in tech was an aim to dismiss those claims. “I never play the gender card,” she told Backchannel, “the moment you play into that, it’s an issue.”

Still, there are a variety of reasons why playing the so-called “gender card” may be hard to avoid.

Women entrepreneurs have to overcome a variety of -- often sexist -- hurdles to get funding for their companies:

Less than 3 percent of the companies that received venture capital funding between 2011 and 2013 had a women at the helm, according to a September study from Babson College. Women entrepreneurs seeking funds can be subject to business meetings that turn into date invitations and inappropriate questions about whether their businesses will survive if they change their relationship status or decide to have a kid.

A graph from Babson illustrating how little funding female entrepreneurs get. More than 97 percent of businesses that are backed by venture capital are headed by men, according to the study.

Even when women entrepreneurs don’t face outright sexism, they often have to deal with subtle bias. Many venture capitalists rely on “pattern recognition,” a philosophy that hones in on patterns that have been successful at other companies, to choose who to fund. That means that people who don’t fit the young, 20-something, white-male-with-hoodie stereotype may be at a disadvantage.

In addition, women make up just 6 percent of partners at venture capital firms, according to Babson. That could put women founders at a disadvantage because people are more likely to see potential in those who are like themselves.

The reasons why women make up such a small share of VC partners are being litigated right now in a trial pitting VC giant Kleiner Perkins against one of its former employees, who is claiming she was subject to gender discrimination at the firm.

Women who want to enter the tech industry as employees can find themselves in the minority too:

Spurred by calls from diversity advocates, companies like Google, Apple and Facebook released data last year on the racial and gender makeup of their companies. The results were predictably dismal. The share of women at most of these tech giants hovers at around 30 percent. At Yahoo, the percentage of female employees is slightly higher at 37 percent, though just 23 percent of its senior leadership team is made up of women.

What the gender breakdown looks like at Google.

Many of these companies have acknowledged that the lack of ladies is a problem. At Google, HR specialists are using a trove of research to help employees acknowledge and rid themselves of unconscious bias. Intel recently set aside $300 million to boost the number of women, Hispanics, blacks and other minority groups in its ranks.

Still, even once women make it in the door, there aren’t very many incentives for them to stick around:

Forty-one percent of women at tech companies leave after 10 years, compared to just 17 percent of men, according to the Harvard Business Review. A 2008 study from HBR found that a hostile work environment was one of the main reasons these women left.

The Los Angeles Times recently highlighted some of these women, whose complaints included being passed up for projects and promotions or having their projects dismissed or taken away.

“They just kept asking me to prove myself over and over again,” said one 15-year veteran.

And the pay gap that grows with seniority doesn’t help:

Overall, the tech industry has a smaller pay gap than other sectors. And while the difference between men and women’s pay starts off small, it grows as workers rise in the ranks, according to a recent study from Glassdoor, a site where workers self-report their salaries.

Of course comments like those from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earlier this year don’t help the case for pay equity. Nadella said at an event last year that women should shy away from asking for raises and instead trust that they’ll get what they deserve. (He later walked back the comments.)

One of the results of all of this: In Silicon Valley, the hotbed of the tech industry, women with bachelor’s and graduate degrees earn 40 to 73 percent less than their male counterparts, according to the the Silicon Valley Index, an annual release of indicators about the Silicon Valley economy and community.

The difference in earnings by education in Silicon Valley, according to the Silicon Valley Index.

Warren Buffett On Elizabeth Warren: 'She Would Do Better If She Were Less Angry'

Warren Buffett thinks Elizabeth Warren should dial down the anger.

“She would do better if she was less angry and demonized less,” said the Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO on Monday when CNBC anchor Joe Kernen asked for his thoughts on the Democratic senator from Massachusetts.

“I believe in 'hate the sin, love the sinner,' and I also believe in praising by name and criticizing by category,” he added.

Buffett, who put out his annual letter to shareholders this weekend, explained that he believes senators on both sides of the aisle need to work together on legislation.

“It does not help when you demonize the people you’re talking to,” he said.

In his CNBC interview, the folksy billionaire reiterated his support for Hillary Clinton’s presumed run for president in 2016. Warren has repeatedly denied that she would run in 2016 -- though her name keeps coming up as a potential Clinton opponent.

Warren’s passionate defense of Main Street and the middle class, particularly during the financial crisis, helped make her name and arguably launched her into the Senate. It also made her a load of enemies on Wall Street. This quote, from a 2011 Vanity Fair piece, sort of sums up the sentiment: "On Wall Street, Warren was regarded, says one bank vice-chairman, as 'the Devil incarnate,' and, according to another executive, a 'showboater,' who didn’t really know what she was talking about."

Of course, as the story points out, Warren does very much know what she’s talking about, and her dogged pursuit of openness and fairness in the finance industry led to the founding of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and has earned her Wall Street’s enmity.

More recently, Warren told ABC's "This Week":

I'm worried a lot about power in the financial services industry and I'm worried about the fact that basically, starting in the '80s, you know, the cops were taken off the beat in financial services. These guys were allowed to just paint a bull's-eye on the backside of American families," Warren said. "They loaded up on risk. They crushed the economy. They got bailed out. What bothers me now, they still strut around Washington, they block regulations that they don't want, they roll over agencies whenever they can.

Still, Buffett isn't your typical Wall Streeter. Again and again, he's advocated for more taxes on the rich.

T.J. Maxx Follows Walmart's Lead And Raises Wages

Walmart isn’t the only retailer bumping its minimum wage to $9 an hour.

T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and other department stores owned by TJX Companies said Wednesday that they would increase pay for their lowest-paid workers to $9 an hour in June. The move comes six days after the world’s biggest retailer announced a similar raise for its employees.

Like Walmart, T.J. Maxx will bump pay to $10 an hour next year for workers who have been there at least six months.

Economists said Walmart's decision to give raises to about a third of its 1.4 million employees would put pressure on other low-wage employers to do the same.

“This pay initiative is an important part of our strategies to continue attracting and retaining the best talent in order to deliver a great shopping experience, remain competitive on wages in our U.S. markets, and stay focused on our value mission,” Carol Meyrowitz, TJX’s chief executive, said in a statement included with the company's fourth-quarter earnings.

Walmart stock fell nearly 3 percent after the company announced it was raising wages for its employees, but traders seem to be more welcoming to TJX's news.

One group of sales associates at T.J. Maxx, the company’s flagship store, have average earnings of $7.98 per hour, according to data submitted by workers to Glassdoor, a site that tracks wages and working conditions.

Retailers and fast-food companies have come under heightened pressure from employees and worker groups to increase their baseline pay as Congress has stalled any efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, which stands at a paltry $7.25.

Why Living In France Is Way Better For Working Parents

Once upon a time, American women led the world when it came to working. In 1990, nearly three-quarters of women age 25-54 were employed in the U.S., ranking it near the top of the democratic countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Since then the percentage of women who work in the U.S. has hardly budged, while other countries have significantly upped their game, as you can see in the following chart from the latest Economic Report Of The President, a giant bundle of data and policy pitches compiled annually by the White House.

The percentage of U.S. women working ticked up only one percentage point since 1990. We now rank 17th on the list of 22 OECD countries. (You can see the full list here.)

France meanwhile is killing it, coming in at number one with nearly 84 percent of women working, up from 72 percent in 1990.

We already know French women have superior attitudes about diet and beauty, but do they also have a better work ethic? Not quite.

The French government has just been much more aggressive about enacting policies that help families and support women who want to have children and keep working. And the policies work. Not only do a huge majority of French women work, France also has the second-highest birth rate in Europe, after Ireland.

Nearly one-third of the gap between the U.S. and the other countries, when it comes to the percentage of women who work, can be traced to the United States’ pitiful work-family policies, says this 2013 study from two researchers at Cornell University. The rest of the gap can be pinned on women aging out of the labor force and the recession, which tossed a lot of workers out of the job market.

France has an enviable bounty of policies that make me and pretty much every mother and father I know want to move there immediately: paid maternity leave, paid pre-school, a generous leave policy that allows parents to take a year off work and receive money from the French government and get their job back.

Here’s what we have in the U.S.: The right to unpaid family leave for 12 weeks.

If you haven’t read Pamela Druckerman’s fantastic account of what it's like to raise your kids in France, Bringing Up Bebe, check it out. She paints an enviable picture of French pre-school where kids eat delicious meals with real silverware. Parents are proud to send them there -- not racked with guilt or nervous for their child’s safety.

Don’t know what I mean? Read Jonathan Cohn’s terrifying piece on American child care, “The Hell of American Day Care.” Cohn serves up data that show only 10 percent of American day care facilities could be ranked as high-quality -- oh, and that day care is expensive, too.

There are some apparent downsides to generous work-leave policies, the Cornell researchers point out. Though a lower percentage of American women work, those that remain in the workforce tend to succeed in greater numbers -- reaching higher up the corporate ladder. Dropping out of the workforce, even with government support, can put women on the notorious "mommy track," where raises and promotions don't come so easy.

Still, not a bad idea to brush up on your French.