Female minister's in top role (12)
I believe the answer is:
directorship
'top role' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both acts as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'female minister's in' is the wordplay.
'female' becomes 'di' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'minister's' becomes 'rectors' ('rector' can be a synonym of 'minister').
'in' becomes 'hip' (both can mean fashionable).
'di'+'rectors'+'hip'='DIRECTORSHIP'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for directorship that I've seen is " special position on board".)