Because humans are dimorphic women are generally smaller and men are generally larger. Since women are smaller, they have smaller heads than men, and thus smaller brains. It used to be believed that the size of your brain correlated to intelligence, and thus, that women are less intelligent than men- therefore incapable of dealing with real issues or doing anything even remotely intellectual. Once this scientific hypothesis was proven wrong, this belief about women began to fade away. This is one way biology and scientific theory has influenced the position of women in society, and played a role in feminism.
This summer I read a book that more or less changed my life. It was titled The Body Project: An Intimate History of the American Girl by a social historian named Joan Jacobs Brumberg. The book often goes into how biology -specifically menarche- has played a huge role in women’s position in society. Stigmas revolving menarche and purity gave women false ideas about self-image and human value.
However, as what was once viewed as a girl’s debut into the world of womanhood became only a sanitary crisis, a different issue had come about: what emotional supports are there for women entering a world in which their bodies are extremely sexualized?
In this way the feminist plight is not only a social plight, but a scientific plight. Nobody had to intervene to make it interdisciplinary – it just is interdisciplinary.