I'm not entirely sure about that. I have very small hands, but like most jazz guitarists, I have a strong preference for a relatively fat neck profile. A guitarist's fretting hand is effectively a class three lever, with the thumb as the fulcrum. If your technique is even remotely correct, a very thin neck gives you less mechanical advantage when fretting.

I think that the key beginner mistake is gripping the neck like a baseball bat, rather than simply using the neck as a place to rest your thumb. The wonderful Toone/Strandberg trapezoid neck profile suggests that the conventional wisdom on neck profile might be utterly wrong.

I do strongly advocate short scale lengths - most women and teenagers should at the very least lean towards a Gibson-scale instrument and may be better off with something in the 22" to 24" range. IME a lot of female guitarists gravitate towards using a capo on the 3rd to 5th fret, partly because it brings the guitar into a more appropriate register to accompany the female voice but primarily because it gives them a shorter effective scale length.

I'm not convinced that small hands need a small neck, or that big hands need a big neck. It's all about what feels comfortable to you.

A tradeoff I've noticed is "fast" versus comfortable. Fatter necks tend to be more comfortable to play, as are necks with more pronounced fretboard radius (like vintage-style Fender necks). Flatter, thinner necks are easier to play faster on, but make my hands sore after a while.

I was referring to the beginners dilemma, not accomplished players. I used to teach guitar long ago last century, and it was amazing how many people showed up with necks they couldn't get their hand around comfortably. When you are starting out the basic physics and mechanics of pressing down on strings and snapping into chord shapes seems impossible - having a neck that is a sympathetic shape to the arc of your thumb to first finger/hand, frets that fall to your finger size, and probably most critical a fretboard width that works with your fingertip size can make a big difference. Your hand gets sore on a flatter, thinner neck because you are using way more hand muscle strength. For a beginner who doesn't have that muscle memory or strength, this equals impossible. Once you get some basic motor skills down through practice a whole new world opens up and all the different playing qualities of playing different style s of guitar open up.