Kwasi Kwarteng’s mother, Charlotte faced racial prejudice to become a barrister
Charlotte Boaitey-Kwarteng, mother of Kwasi Kwarteng, United Kingdom’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer, reportedly faced racial prejudice advancing up her career in law since her immigration into the UK in the 1960s.
In the 1980s, as a black woman applying to the bar, Ms Boaitey-Kwarteng had to overcome discrimination from other attorneys, according to her profile on the Inner Temple website, one of the four Inns of Court, a professional association for barristers and judges.
She is the managing partner of 12 Square Chambers, a leading chamber in immigration, public law, and human rights, with offices in Holborn, north London.
Her residence is a modest semi-detached property in Middlesex on a peaceful street, that she still shares with her 75-year-old husband, Alfred, who worked as an economist for the Commonwealth Secretariat according to Daily Mail.
Having immigrated to the UK in the 1960s from Ghana, the couple wed in 1972 in the St. Pancras neighbourhood of London.
According to Ms. Boaitey-Kwarteng’s profile on the Inner Temple website, she gained an LLB from London University in 1970.
After graduating, she worked with Community Relations Commission, carrying out research and providing legal advice on refugees and citizenship. She was called by the Middle Temple in 1976.
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While spending time in Geneva as a stay at home mother, she took the opportunity to attend seminars and research international law.
In 1980 she read Social Anthropology at Oxford University and was a member of Oxford Women Anthropologists which promoted the writing and publication of women. Boaity-Kwarteng was the consultant anthropologist to Granada Television’s Disappearing World: Asante Market Women.
Her background is now in general common law with considerable experience in criminal law, both defence and prosecution, as well as in employment and local government law.
She now focuses on arbitration, family law mediation, wills and probate and providing expert opinion on African (especially Ghanaian) customary law (marriages and divorces).
She attended the Ghana Law School in 1997 to study Ghanaian customary laws and was admitted as a barrister of the Supreme Court of Ghana that same year. She is a member of the Nigerian branch of the Chartered Institute of Arbitration and a member of the African Arbitration Association.
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