Southern females must change, to be exact (8)
I believe the answer is:
selfsame
'be exact' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'southern females must change' is the wordplay.
'southern' becomes 's' (abbreviation).
'must change' is an anagram indicator (I've seen this in other clues).
'females' with letters rearranged gives 'elfsame'.
's'+'elfsame'='SELFSAME'
'to' is the link.
(Other definitions for selfsame that I've seen before include "The identical kind, not changed or different" , "Exactly identical" .)