My anthropological adventure, part 2

It was certainly a weekend of contradictions, at least in terms of women’s roles.
On Shabbat morning, as you will recall, I attended the Masorti synagogue for my cousin’s Bar-Mitzvah. My aunt received an aliya, and stood on the bimah as her son read from the Torah; another female cousin opened the ark, and I stood in the center of the congregation and recited the prayer for the Queen (which must have sounded ridiculous with my thick North American accent – although as a naturalized Canadian citizen, I’m sure I was the only person in the room to have ever sworn allegiance to the British monarch). Overall, the service was just as I remembered it: dignified, intense and serious. Being part of it, and having women at the center of the service, felt natural.
That afternoon, we ate Seudah Shlishit with haredi friends. They gave out birkonim and we started to sing zmirot. At a certain point, I became aware I was the only woman at the table who was singing, and quickly toned down to a whisper. I couldn’t quite bring myself to shut up altogether.
“I love singing,” said my hostess wistfully, noticing my dilemma, “but there’s such a thing as kol isha.”
Just hours earlier, I’d helped lead a congregation; and now my voice was being literally muted. Of-course, that’s not representative at all of the Orthodox circles in which I hang out, or even of any of the haredi families I’ve eaten with before. But the contrast and symbolism haunts me, and forced me to ask myself again: why do I agree to be hidden behind a curtain?
The problem, as Pinchas Peli once put it (quoting, I believe, someone else), is that the people I talk to I don't want to daven with, and those I daven with, I don't want to talk to.
Masorti and the non-Orthodox movements except in very rare instances have yet to show that they’ve achieved the intensity of Jewish involvement and Jewish knowledge of the Orthodox community. The Orthox community, on the other hand, have the intensity, but can be infuriating in their social and ideological stances. What to do, what to do?