@ellenvera, the context is important as follows:
1Ti 2:9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire,
1Ti 2:10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.
1Ti 2:11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.
1Ti 2:12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
1Ti 2:13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve;
1Ti 2:14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
1Ti 2:15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
One principle of Bible interpretation is that we need to look for the main idea or principle in a passage and sort it out from the application to its culture. That being said, Paul bases verse 12 on Genesis 2. Therefore, we shouldn’t dismiss it as being cultural as such.
I’ll summarize my studies on this issue. Paul is inspired to teach a middle way between two unbiblical ideas, male dominance and individualism.
On the one hand, a man is not supposed to be “king of his castle,” that is, the absolute ruler in his marriage or in the church.
On the other hand, male and female were not supposed to be completely independent of each other.
In Genesis 1:26 and 27, God creates male and female with equal status before him, while in Genesis 2, he creates Adam first and then Eve, thus establishing different roles for them in relationship with each other:
Gen 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them….
Gen 2:20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
Gen 2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
Gen 2:22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Gen 2:23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
The woman is to be the man’s suitable helper within their relationship. Notice that Adam names Eve “woman” as a way, according to the Bible’s use of naming that means, asserting a measure of authority over the named person.
In Ephesians 5:22 and following, Paul further defines the male and female’s roles in marriage. Husbands must love their wives the way Jesus does the church, that is, by serving the wives’ needs so that the males become servant-leaders in the home. Wives must submit (that is, voluntarily give in to their husbands’ leadership in all important matters that could tear those unions apart).
Eph 5:22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
Eph 5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
Eph 5:24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Also, Paul extends male headship as the servant-leader to the church in 1 Corinthians 11:3 and then goes on to apply the principle to his culture:
1Co 11:3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.
In 1 Timothy 2, Paul is using the same principle for the Ephesian church’s situation, but the principle remains the same, that is, men’s servant-leadership and women’s need to submit to their leadership.