Deduce liner, heading away, is carrying female (5)
I believe the answer is:
infer
'deduce' is the definition.
(I know that deduce can be written as infer)
'liner heading away is carrying female' is the wordplay.
'heading away' means to remove the first letter (the word's 'head' is removed).
'is carrying' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'female' becomes 'f' (common abbreviation).
'liner' with its first letter taken off is 'iner'.
'iner' going around 'f' is 'INFER'.
(Other definitions for infer that I've seen before include "Deduce by reasoning" , "Derive by reasoning" , "Work out" , "Draw a conclusion" , "Imply" .)