In personality research, it is well documented that women are more anxious than men. (On average. Overlapping Bell curves, yadda yadda, d~0.4 or so.) This probably isn't surprising to you, since the effect is big enough that it should be noticeable in your personal life.
I think people commonly interpret this fact as meaning that women are higher in what I'd call the "general factor of anxiety" than men. That is, across a wide variety of unrelated situations, women would find things more worrying than men.
However, personality measures of anxiety are not really designed to measure the general factor of anxiety. Instead e.g. NEO-IPIP 's Anxiety scale just asks questions roughly synonymous with "How anxious are you?" over and over again.
There are some cases where it would seem like women face anxiety-worthy things that men don't face as much. For instance women are surrounded by people who are much bigger and stronger than them and could totally beat them in a fight. And women face certain sorts of gender norms that men don't have (though men may face other gender norms so YMMV), e.g. women may be judged more than men by how good they look or how messy their home is. These sorts of factors could cause women to specifically be worried about these problems while not necessarily being extra worried about random things more generally.
This could probably be assessed in many ways, but one way that will be considered sufficient for this question is using standard survey methods. It should be possible to design an anxiety test that asks about specific kinds of anxiety (e.g. "Do you feel afraid of big angry-looking men with tattoos?"). If someone designs a test like this which mainly focuses on factors where neither men nor women have special reasons to be anxious (such that it would presumably assess sex differences in general anxiety), and finds that the sex difference on the general factor of society is at least 75% of the overall sex difference in anxiety (as measured by Cohen's d), this question resolves YES. If they find it to be less than 75% of the overall sex difference in anxiety, this question resolves NO.
The question might also resolve based on other things, but I consider it unlikely. The question will not resolve based on some galaxybrained indirect strategy. I will likely run the study described in the resolution criteria at some point.
Informal poll: Consider the following things that one could be anxious, fearful or otherwise upset about:
That one's house is clean and orderly enough when the family visits
Drunks in public
Whether you are a bad person if you harm animals
Getting work done that you have been procrastinating on
Children's safety
Spiders
One's health, or one's family's health (possibly this should be distinguished into two, idk)
Forgetting things when packing for a trip
Crime
Family judging one's lifestyle
Finding the right direction when going places
Whether people who are late have been in e.g. a car accident
People getting revenge after school/work conflicts
Giving speeches at birthdays or weddings
Fixing plumbing at home
Taking an exam or getting interviewed (again, should this be distinguished into two? idk)
Getting reprimanded at work
Getting vaccinated
One's country getting involved in a war
Hurting one's friends' feelings
The far future
Travel delays
Whether one is skilled enough for work
Getting cheated on by one's romantic partner
Inflation
Being secretly disliked by one's friends
Whether one looks good enough (in terms of appearance)
Dealing with one's gear getting dirty on a vacation
Saying wrong/embarrassing things to strangers
Breaking one's cups or plates
Interruptions in one's work routine
Getting caught violating the rules at work
Catching an illness
Societal elites don't care about people like you
Dealing with bureaucratic errors
Bad weather
Getting lost
The risk that planned events (e.g. restaurant visits) become impossible (e.g. due to the restaurant being full)
Going to the doctor
Talking on the telephone
Personal financial situation
Getting fired
Getting cancelled
Being in a car when someone else is driving
Harmful additives in food
Asking restaurant staff for changes in meals
Being at big parties
Sex
One's family being too isolated and lacking support from each other
Having to deal with someone who is upset and worried
Which of these seem "biased" towards women being more anxious than they really are? Which ones seem "biased" towards men being more anxious than they really are? Which ones seem "unbiased"?
@tailcalled Biased towards women being more anxious than they really are: 2, 5 somewhat, I guess 47, maybe 48.
Biased towards men being more anxious than they really are: 19.
3 seems more about guilt/morality/compassion so I'd consider not using it in the main analysis.