First off, this is not a programming question but a mathematical problem.
Second, I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly but here's my interpretation: Because you are required to have at least as many women as men on a committee and since there are 6 members in each committee it follows that the minimum number of women in a committee would have to be 3. So there are only 4 possible types of committees:
- 3 male : 3 female
- 2 male : 4 female
- 1 male : 5 female
- 0 male : 6 female (as pointed out by Philip Sheard)
Then, you could use the following logic:
For committees formed of 3 male and 3 female, the number of possible committees would be the number of possible combinations of elements from the two sets:
- The set of all possible combinations of 3 males from the total 18
=C(18,3)
- The set of all possible combinations of 3 females from the total 12
=C(12,3)
Let's call CM = C(18,3)
the number of different combinations of 3 men can be formed from the 18 male members; And let's call CF = C(12,3)
the number of different combinations of 3 women can be formed from the 12 female members.
The result for a 3:3 type committee would be CF x CM
CF x CM = C(18,3) * C(12,3)
CF x CM = (18! * 12!) / (3! * 15! * 3! * 9!)
Then, you could use the same logic to compute the number of committees for 2:4 and then for 1:5, and finally for 0:6.
Summing them all should give you the final result.