Yes, you can - if you are not using strict refs:

for my $element (qw/var1 var2 var3/) {
    %$element = ( a => 'b');
}
print $var1{a};
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The common practice, though, is to use one hash instead, making the elements of the list the keys. You can then shorten the creation to

my @array = qw(var1 var2 var3);
my %hash;
undef @hash{@array};
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