A surprising passage in Masekhet Soferim 18:5 obligates women to recite the Shema prayer, directly challenging the long-held belief that women were entirely excluded from Jewish religious life during the Rabbinic period. Through close textual analysis and manuscript comparison of sixteen extant versions, this research reveals significant variations in rabbinic attitudes toward women's religious participation. While manuscript variants suggest possible scribal errors, five manuscripts definitively retain the original reading requiring women's participation - a ruling that contradicts established Mishnaic law exempting women from time-bound commandments. Beyond the Shema obligation, the passage reflects broader assumptions about women's presence in worship, their duty to study, and family inclusion in ritual activities. Moving beyond commonly cited sources like the Mishnah and Babylonian Talmud to examine lesser-known rabbinic texts uncovers important "gray areas" that complicate traditional narratives of complete female disenfranchisement. These findings demonstrate that rabbinic perspectives on women's religious roles were neither uniform nor consistently exclusionary, necessitating a more nuanced understanding of women's status in early Jewish religious life.