Re: Book of Hadith
Verse 37 comes before Sheeba converted. Verse 44, like you said, is Sheeba surrendering to God, not to Sulaiman. Sulaiman took over the land, as I've re-read the passage. However, nowhere does it say in these verses that the reason for the take-over and her stepping down from power was because she is a woman and that's not her rightful place. Rather, the Quran says that everything was running smoothly under her hands, as a soldier of Soloman's reports to him (and this is God telling us that a female leader CAN be efficient and successful.
The point of the whole Sheeba story was that a female head of state was doing everything incredibly well, except she and her people worshipped the wrong deity. That was changed because she accepted Allah as her God later on, once she became acquainted with Sulaiman.
The fact that she stepped down from power has nothing to do with Sulaiman being a man and she being a female. It has to do with the fact that Sulaiman's army was an invading army and Sheeba's city was taken over. You can't have 2 kings. Once Sulaiman takes over the city for his empire building, then he's the king of it.
Lets say you had two leaders and God says well leader one has red hair and the second leader has black hair. Lets say leader 1 sweeps in and takes over leader 2's land, and leader 2 steps down. Is it appropriate then to say that all people with black hair are unfit to lead states, and only people with red hair can? Similarly, Sheeba's gender has nothing to do with her stepping down. If Queen sheeba was the one invading, and matters were reversed so that Sulaiman was taken over, then we can't really say that only females are fit to be leaders and men are not.
If women were unfit to be leaders, the Quran would have clearly said "Queen Sheeba should not have been a queen since women can't be leaders, and so Sulaiman was sent to take over".
I mean really people.