Be patronising towards women denied start (5)
I believe the answer is:
exist
'be' is the definition.
(I know that be can be written as exist)
'patronising towards women denied start' is the wordplay.
'patronising towards women' becomes 'sexist'.
'denied start' means to remove the first letter.
'sexist' with its first letter taken off is 'EXIST'.
(Other definitions for exist that I've seen before include "Survive" , "Have being or continue living" , "Subsist" , "Live" , "Have objective reality" .)