Are We Missing Something?

In all of the interpretation and re-interpretation and critique and sermonizing and judgment and re-re-re-re-interpretation that happens around the New Testament instructions to women, I have begun to wonder if we may have missed something very important. If maybe we skipped over a couple of steps, put the cart before the horse, and ended up assuming a meaning that may not have been the original intent. I don't know if that's the case (obviously), but I'm wondering, and I want to share my wonderings and scout out some opinions.
First question: have we used words without considering what we mean by them, or if our assumptions of their meanings are accurate? Many people point to Proverbs 31:27 to back up the belief that a woman's place is in the home, because it says "She [the excellent wife] looks well to the ways of her household". Is this any different from the command to the male overseers in 1 Timothy 3 to "manage his household well"? What does the phrase "looks well after" really mean? What about the word "manage"? Are those different? Or have we interpreted each phrase, and thus each verse, through a cultural lens and read into the text a bias of social gender roles?
Second question: do we unthinkingly assume we know where the emphasis lies in the instruction? In Titus 2:5, Paul instructs older women to teach the younger women to be "sensible, pure, workers at home, kind" etc., etc. For most of the characteristics he describes, we know what he's going for: be sensible, as opposed to being an idiot; be pure, as opposed to being corrupt; be kind, as opposed to be a jerk. But what about for "workers at home"? Is he telling women to be workers at home as opposed to workers outside the home, or as opposed to lazy bums at home? In other words, is the emphasis "be workers at home" or "be workers at home"? My guess is that Paul was going for the latter emphasis, and I think this largely because two of the prominent female church leaders with Paul were successful business owners (Lydia & Priscilla) and because the Proverbs 31 woman was praised not for her work in the home, but because of her lack of idleness. In this light, Paul was expounding on a "whatever you do, do it for the Lord" sort of idea: as long as you're at home (which most women were in that day), do quality work, don't just be a lazy bum. That's a very different reading than the traditional "women must be stay-at-home homemakers" reading, but I can't see a good argument for choosing the latter.
Third question: are we reading too much importance into what the text does not say? This is somewhat related to the second question, but broader. One of the most hotly contested texts in this whole role-of-women debate is Ephesians 5:22: "Wives, submit to your husbands as unto the Lord." What this doesn't say is "Husbands, you don't have to submit to your wives because you're above them." That sentiment is decidedly absent from the text, especially because the previous verse instructs all believers (which presumably includes wives and husbands) to "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ". Yet that is precisely the sentiment we always read into that verse: not only that the man has no obligation to submit to the woman, but that the man should not submit to the woman and if he does it is sin and a disruption of the God-given order of things. But the text never ever says that the man shouldn't submit to the woman! In fact, it says the opposite: that all believers, men included, should submit to each other, women included. I think when we read this text we look for x statement that's not explicit in the text, amplify the importance of x, and then use the absence of x to re-interpret what the text actually says.
Let's say I used this method in another domain of life. Let's say I'm teaching my ESL class, and the students are working in small groups on a review worksheet that includes a number of different topics. Let's say I tell students in group A, "I think you should work a little more on the past tense verbs", and I tell students in group B, "I think you should focus on understanding gerunds". Now, if we interpreted these statements to my students the same way we interpret Ephesians 5:22, we would come out with this sort of meaning:
Group A students are born needing to work on past tense, and will always need to work on past tense verbs. Group B students are born needing to work on gerunds, and will always need to work on gerunds. This is the Way Things Are In The World, so it's not okay for Group B students work on past tense verbs instead of gerunds or vice-versa.
Is this reasonable at all? Absolutely not! No one would ever interpret my instructions to my students this way; why do we insist on interpreting the Bible this way?
Now, I know there are more texts (like 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 11) that have a bearing on the interpretation of the passages I mentioned here. I know I gave an incomplete picture of the Scripture's portrayal of women. I'm not saying the traditional interpretation is wrong, and I'm not saying my interpretation is right--in some cases, I'm not even sure what my interpretation is. All I'm saying is that we need to take a closer look at how we come to our conclusions about what the texts mean, and question every interpretive step we take along the way: meanings of words, where the emphasis lies in the statement, the importance of what isn't explicitly stated. We need to question our assumptions, because we all know what happens when you assume, and making an ass out of God's word or God's people is not a good idea.