Learned helplessness is when an individual has learned to depend on others when he or she needs help, even when they can in reality do the task themselves.

I think if you are trying to associate learned helplessness with young women it could be related the attitude that society has towards young women. For example, a father has a teenage daughter and a teenage son. Generally speaking, the son may be allowed more freedom to do as he chooses because of the general notion that boys can take better care of themselves than girls can. The father may look at his "little girl" and feel that she needs protection. This may be creating learned helplessness.

You ask if this is more common in young women.  I think that it is more common in young women, but I think that it is not necessarily connected to gender.  Instead, I think that it is connected to power relations.

I think that learned helplessness is connected to having little or no power.  In many cultures, this applies to women.  However, it can also apply to racial or ethnic minorities and to people who do not have very much money.

I believe that people who have little power get used to acting in helpless ways.  In some cases, it becomes pathological.

This is a fairly powerful topic.  I would probably suggest that it might not be entirely accurate from a scientific point of view to associated learned helplessness with an entire gender.  There could be some exploration on the topic, but to associate it with a group of people could be challenging to prove because of the need to justify each example fitting the norm.  Those young women who might exhibit tendencies of learned helplessness might be doing so because of the images of subjugation that could be around them.  This could be in relation to a variety of elements, such as domestic or economic conditions.  In the end, the pattern of learned helplessness is one that is appropriated with direct contact or sensation of an experience where futility is understood.  This means that learned helplessness is present when there are images of victimization present in the direct environment of the person in question.