Importance of women on crew (6)
I believe the answer is:
weight
'importance' is the definition.
(weight is a kind of importance)
'women on crew' is the wordplay.
'women' becomes 'w'.
'on' says to put letters next to each other.
'crew' becomes 'eight' (I've seen this before).
'w'+'eight'='WEIGHT'
'of' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for weight that I've seen before include "Pressure" , "Heavy load - preponderance" , "Vertical force exerted by a mass" , "Importance, heaviness" , "Avoir-du-pois" .)