The business case for diversity is strong, and numerous studies on the cost and effectiveness of diversity or why gender diversity is a corporate performance driver list plenty of proof points.
The research, based on the US-wide National Education Longitudinal Survey, found that a teacher's gender had "large effects on student test performance".
The 1997 awardees included Luis Alfaro, a Los Angeles performance artist who challenges views on race relations, gender and poverty, and Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, who started a bank for American Indians.