"As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church."
What does it mean that “women . . . are not permitted to speak in church”? If we take these two and a half verses in isolation, they seem to indicate that women are not permitted to say anything at all in church services. But that cannot be true because chapter eleven, when dealing with head coverings, puts guidelines on how women are to pray and prophecy in church. So in what sense should women “keep silent in the churches”?
I believe that the key to understanding the prohibition lies in the immediately preceding verses. The previous verses addressed how to keep prophets accountable. If there was a prophecy that contradicted revealed truth, the others were to call the contradictory prophecy and prophet into question. I submit that the restriction forbidding women to speak applies specifically to this necessary challenging of contradictory prophecy.
If a woman believed that what was being asserted as truth was really false, she was not to publicly call it into question. Instead she was to ask her husband at home. Notice how the prohibition is linked with the need to be in submission: "they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission." It is possible to converse, pray, or explain submissively. But challenging an assertion is not usually an act of submission.
This fits perfectly with the likelihood that the prohibition was a prohibition from publicly challenging men. Perhaps this was due to the cultural realization that it would have shamed a man to be corrected by a woman. Whatever the motivation, it frees women to participate in church while clarifying that everything should be done in a way that recognizes and respects authority.
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