The researchers reshaping the future of women-led business in Yorkshire

Lyndsay Mitcheson, founder of walking stick company Neo Walk, is part of a tenacious group of entrepreneurs, researchers and advocates who are working to break barriers for female-led business in York and North Yorkshire

Lyndsay Mitcheson, founder of walking stick company Neo Walk, is part of a tenacious group of entrepreneurs, researchers and advocates who are working to break barriers for female-led business in York and North Yorkshire

In York, entrepreneurship is far from a level playing field. Across the city and the North Yorkshire region there are more than 23,000 fewer self-employed women than men, and men remain nearly twice as likely to work for themselves. The gap shows up in investment too. Female-led organisations raised only £62,000 of equity, compared with £3.8m raised by male-led counterparts.

They’re stark figures that have come out of a new report highlighting the persistent barriers facing women entrepreneurs in York and North Yorkshire. The uplifting news? A group of researchers, entrepreneurs and advocates in the region – led by the University of York’s business support community Enterprise Works – is now addressing these systemic challenges.

Critically, the research undertaken to inform the report was drawn directly from local female entrepreneurs, to ensure it reflected their experiences.

Lyndsay Mitcheson is one of them. In 2010, she lost her leg after a serious MRSA infection. Her life changed overnight, as did her relationship with her own body. As she took the literal and metaphorical steps needed to return to normality, she found herself frustrated by the walking sticks available to her. They were, as she puts it, all “grey or flowery”.

Neo Walk creates custom walking sticks in a multitude of colours and patterns. Image: Joanne Crawford

So, she decided to make her own. It was clear acrylic, and to her surprise, people stopped her in the street to comment on it. The conversation had shifted to the unique stick instead of her disability, and the feeling “was priceless,” she says. She wanted others to experience that. And so Neo Walk was born.

Today the North Yorkshire-based company creates custom walking sticks in every shade imaginable, from glittery winter silvers to aquamarine and emerald. It ships internationally and counts Selma Blair and Christina Applegate among its customers.

But Mitcheson’s success has not been straightforward. Nearly a decade passed between making that first stick in her kitchen and employing her first member of staff. Alongside the sheer graft, she grappled with imposter syndrome and, significantly, the challenge of being taken seriously as a woman, let alone a disabled one.

“There’s often quite a lot of pity. ‘Isn’t she good for trying?’ You get that attitude quite a lot,” she says. This made approaching financial institutions even more daunting. “I didn’t feel that I could go looking for finance because I didn’t feel I would have been taken seriously,” she continues.

New Walk's sticks are customisable and made to order. Image: Joanne Crawford