Kol 'Ishah & Women's Krias haTorah II: Rav Henkin's Take

While going through stuff for another posting on the topic of aliyot for women, I found that Rabbi Yehuda Herzl Henkin wrote "[o]ne may indeed ask, why should reading the Torah be different with regard to kol b'ishah ervah than reading the Megillah?"
In my first posting on this particular topic, I wrote

the reason that the Sages that were quoted in the beraisa (on Megillah 23a) did not mention the woman's voice issue is because it had not yet come about. The kevod zibbur issue was brought up by tannaim, the woman's voice issue came about at the beginning of the amoraic period, derived by Shmuel....

Nevertheless, Rabbi Henkin's suggestion to the aforementioned question is that he thinks

the Megillah reading is different because of the special affection people have for it, as stated in Megillah 21b regarding two or more people reading the Megillah in unison, something not permitted in other readings....

He adds that since "Purim is a time of feasting and drinking, which lead to impropriety", then "a woman reading the Megillah for men would presumably not do so in the synagogue but at home, where there are fewer restraints...."
I have no particular critics or criticisms, just presenting it here, as I found another person asking the same question, albeit with a different answer.

Kol 'Ishah & Women's Krias haTorah

As one of the postings I had wanted to post in my hiatus from blogging, this was one I definitely wanted to do a couple of weeks ago and just didn't - it's the third in my series on women and krias haTorah.
In Rabbi Mendel Shapiro's "Qeri’at ha-Torah by Women: A Halakhic Analysis", he includes a section on kol 'ishah, running pp. 40-41 and pp. 41-43, nn. 228-230 (yes, one of the annoyances of the editing of the article to me was that footnotes to sections in the text were on one or two pages ahead). A big selection of that small section is the following (pp. 40-41):

The question of whether qeri’at ha-Torah by women in accordance with the prescribed musical notations (ta`amei ha-miqra) violates qol ishah has not, to my knowledge, been directly addressed by poseqim. There is, however, ample collateral evidence that normative halakhah does not prohibit the practice on this ground. First, as R. Ovadiah Yosef points out, the Talmud’s declaration that women may not read the Torah because of kevod ha-tsibbur (sic), and for no other reason, is strong evidence that the rabbis did not regard qol ishah as a relevant consideration.

The footnote at the end of this selection refers the reader to two selections from R' Yosef's Yehaveh Da'at, the latter of which is not particularly relevant to kol 'ishah. The first selection is a brief quote from the third section, the 51st chapter (I am trying to access Spertus right now to get the full text of the responsum, but I think Spertus' Bar Ilan feature is down for the time being):

...ומכל מקום, קשה לי מהגמרא "הכל עולים לקריאת התורה למנין שבעה אפילו אשה וקטן, אבל אמרו חכמים אשה לא תקרא בתורה מפני כבוד הצבור", הרי שלא חששו לאסור משום קול באשה ערוה, אף על פי שסתם קריאה בתורה עם טעמי המקרא. וצ"ע.

...And in any event, it is difficult for me from the Talmudic statement "Everybody ascends to the reading of the Torah for the counting of seven, even a woman or a minor, but [the] Sages said a woman should not read of the Torah on account of the congregation's honor" - behold, they were not concerned to forbid because of "a woman's voice is a nakedness", even though that a normal reading of the Torah is with cantillation. And [this matter] requires looking into.

(Yes, by the way, he wrote כבוד הצבור and not כבוד צבור.)
I must point out, however, that the reason that the Sages that were quoted in the beraisa (on Megillah 23a) did not mention the woman's voice issue is because it had not yet come about. The kevod zibbur issue was brought up by tannaim, the woman's voice issue came about at the beginning of the amoraic period, derived by Shmuel (Berakhos 24a (and also quoted by one of his students in Kiddushin 70a)) : "קול באשה ערוה, שנאמר 'כי קולך ערב ומראך נאוה'" ("A woman's voice is a nakedness, as it is said, 'because your voice is sweet and your appearance is pleasing.'")
However, it is possible that the stammaim could have inquired about this issue, but I'll leave that be for now (thus, it could be that even where a congregation waives their honor, there would still be an issue of women singing [publicly] - but I'm not going to get into that).