Provokes female perhaps to divide English and Poles (9)
I believe the answer is:
engenders
'provokes' is the definition.
'female perhaps to divide english and poles' is the wordplay.
'female perhaps' becomes 'gender'.
'to divide' is an insertion indicator (some letters create a division in others).
'english' becomes 'E' (abbreviation).
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'poles' becomes 'NS' (north and south poles).
'e'+'ns'='ens'
'gender' put into 'ens' is 'ENGENDERS'.
(Other definitions for engenders that I've seen before include "Brings forth, generates" , "Produces, causes" , "Gives rise to, causes" , "Leads to" .)