Country making no progress has to ditch male in leading position (6)
I believe the answer is:
nation
'country' is the definition.
(I know that country can be written as nation)
'no progress has to ditch male in leading position' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'no' could be 'o' (O resembles 0) and 'o' is present in the answer.
'in' is within the answer.
The remaining letters 'nat' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'making' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for nation that I've seen before include "People of common culture or descent" , "A federation of tribes, as Native Americans say" , "Race" , "Body of people united by their homeland" , "People sharing a common culture/descent" .)