A contrary view/hypothesis: women have higher average levels of social anxiety (as measurable by prescriptions for anxiety meds, and also on demographic studies of the Big-5 personality traits of agreeableness+neuroticism.)
And people with social anxiety don't want to take risks that could result in increased happiness/relief from suffering, but which also have the potential for greatly decreasing their social status.
Examples of such actions: romantically initiating (see "Lesbian sheep syndrome"), asserting one's worth in interviews (= a non-negligible part of the wage gap, after materity effects are removed), "saying no" to unwanted advances, and... committing suicide.
(Fun corollary hypothesis: anti-depressants like SSRIs increase suicidality precisely by removing the inhibitory effect of social-anxiety upon this class of positive-utility-but-disapproved-of actions.)
Antidepressants increase suicidality because their mechanism of action relies on rapid up-regulation and then gradual down-regulation of autoreceptors. For some people, the initial result is a paradoxically anxiety-ridden and dysphoric state.
And people with social anxiety don't want to take risks that could result in increased happiness/relief from suffering, but which also have the potential for greatly decreasing their social status.
Examples of such actions: romantically initiating (see "Lesbian sheep syndrome"), asserting one's worth in interviews (= a non-negligible part of the wage gap, after materity effects are removed), "saying no" to unwanted advances, and... committing suicide.
(Fun corollary hypothesis: anti-depressants like SSRIs increase suicidality precisely by removing the inhibitory effect of social-anxiety upon this class of positive-utility-but-disapproved-of actions.)