In hearing, assist a woman (3)
I believe the answer is:
ada
'woman' is the definition.
'in hearing assist a' is the wordplay.
'in hearing assist' becomes 'ad' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ad'+'a'='ADA'
(Other definitions for ada that I've seen before include "Computer language; girl's name" , "girl?" , "-- Lovelace, pioneer in computing" , "Programming language" , "Computer lang.; f. name" .)