Explanation

It is supposed to be clear to us in this question that you can be in neither or either or both of the Spanish and French clubs, but that you are either male or female, not both or something else. With this information, let's evaluate the data statements, separately first.

Statement (1): this information seems promising. The fact that "the only members absent were male" at this meeting means that no females were missing. The problem is that some of the females in attendance might be members of only one club, not both--we don't get any hints as to how much overlap there is. Consider cases: there could be 21 females, all of them in both clubs. Or there could be 10 females from Spanish only, 10 from French only, and only 1 female in both present. Insufficient.

Statement (2): this information also is useful but not enough. We know how the female member count in each club, but we don't know the overlap. We could infer the overlap if we knew how many actual female people this represented, but we don't have that. It's up in Statement (1), but we don't have it at the moment. For all we know from this statement, there could be an overlap of all 9 French members, or no members at all. Insufficient.

Combining, we know that the female memberships of 14 and 9 add up to 21 female people, not 23, so there must be a shared membership of 2. Sufficient.

The correct answer is (C).