I guess, the jobs where mostly in fields that are severely underpaid anyways, so they could use a helping hand. Companies couldn’t really abuse this to replace a full position since it was short term. And it was limited to the social field, so you had to do something at least remotely useful to society.

Imo it’s way better than forcing people into the military, but not having forced labor is the better option. If you want to have more workers in the social field you can just incentivise that. Also it was super unfair since only men had to do this.