Why do the women in the countryside think Ichabod is an important person? How do the young girls respond to him?

We learn
from the narrator that the women in any rural village generally think of the schoolmaster as an
important person. A school teacher is considered to be a gentleman because of his
education.

The women of Sleepy Hollow admire schoolmaster Ichabod Crane
because he has read "several" books all the way through and is learned in the works of
Cotton Mather on New England witchcraft, in which, we learn he "firmly" and
"potently" believed. In other words, the narrator is poking fun at the women for
looking up to a superstitious man who is not all that well read.

The women
like to invite him over for tea and cakes, and he enjoys gathering grapes for the young
"damsels" or girls who cluster around him. As the narrator describes it,
Crane

would figure among them [the damsels] in the
churchyard . . . gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overrun the surrounding
trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a
whole bevy of them . . .

The key point is that Crane is
described as womanly and effeminate, pictured among teapots and cakes or "sauntering"
with the young ladies. He is a contrast, therefore, to the virile, strong, and manly Brom Bones,
who is usually surrounded by his male "gang."