Yes that is the question what does he mean by "preaching" and what does he mean by "church". But in any case, in the Apostolic communities, the tradition is such, that women do not serve the Word in it's verbal or physical form.
That being said I remember when I was at a non-denominational and there was a female speaker. I was new to the faith and in that moment I wasn't actually Christian. I had gone there just to argue, because I figured the Bible is actually stupid and contradicting. But it was either when she started praying or when she started to tell of the wounds of Christ, that I was filled with a living energy in my chest. I did not accept it at first, but this was pivotal to my conversion. This hasn't happened at any other time.
Technically, this non-denomination was not part of the Church or the churches. It is outside the "universal" Church. She was teaching, and preaching, but the perimiter was actually outside of the Church, strictly speaking, if we interpret it, as the Apostolic tradition does.
In Paul's day, a "teacher" was someone like his own teacher, Gamaliel, or Jesus. A teacher had disciples. The teacher created doctrine which his disciples learned and followed abjectly. The disciple also lived with his teacher and served his teacher's needs. In the Gospels, we can see the authority the teacher had over his disciples, such as when Jesus commanded His disciples to go into town and bring back food, while Jesus Himself sat down at a well to talk to a strange Samaritan woman. Or when Jesus commanded His disciples to go into town to get a donkey and bring it back for Him to ride...while they walked behind Him. Or Jesus' authority to change Simon's name from what Simon's father had named him. A teacher had full authority to exact
discipline on a disciple as he wished. Teachers as Paul understood them had extreme authority over their disciples, a relationship we don't have today, not in the church or even in secular life.
That's what he had in mind when he said he didn't permit a woman to teach men: Doctrinal authority and disciplinary authority. He wasn't talking about a woman merely
expounding information to a man, as Pricilla did with Apollos; Priscilla did not have any authority over Apollos, she merely provided him with information. He was saying that he did not permit men to be disciples under a master the way he had been under Gamaliel or Peter had been under Jesus. In our modern churches, a typical Sunday school "teacher" is merely expounding a prepared lesson text with no actual authority over the people in the class; Paul would not call that person a "teacher."
And Paul did direct that older women should teach younger women, which meant that there
was a teaching role for women.
So, by Paul's instruction, a man was to be discipled under a man and a woman discipled under a woman. Essentially, Paul was opposed to co-ed discipleship.
That changed, however, if the woman was married. In that case, she was properly under her husband for teaching. When there were women "asking question" of the elders of the church, what did that actually mean in Paul's mind? Remember that teachers in that day commonly used some variation of the so-called "Socratic Method," learning by bouncing questions back and forth we see in Luke that Jesus was "asking questions" of the lawyers in the temple.
By "asking questions" of the elders during congregational services, those women were insinuating themselves as disciples of those male elders...which is what Paul prohibited. They should have been either disciples of older women if unmarried, or learning from their husbands if married.
