Over here (Austria) it's 6 months for military or 9 months for social. The people in the social program are actually contributing labor and their work is really important.

The people going into military spend most of their time in training. While there they can learn some skills free of charge, e.g. they can do their driver's license or the truck driver's license or get some medical training, stuff like that. So it's not completely wasted time for the individual, but almost completely. They serve mostly a political/ideological purpose.

One thing to note here regarding Austria's military service that will not apply to other countries: Our military is total and utter crap when it comes to combat. Like, they aren't even pretending that they could defend the country.

Instead, the biggest part of the real usage of the military is in disaster mitigation/recovery. So for example, currently there are some severe floods in southern Austria and some villages are actually completely cut off by the floods. So the military is there to first airdrop supplies, then they built a temporary ferry service and now they are building a new road through the muddy forest. Recruits doing their mandatory service are used for these purposes. So even from a social aspect, they aren't completely useless either.

The question is whether it is fair to force people to do that, and also if they wouldn't force them, who else would do it? That's not really the point of conscription at all, but it's a major side effect over here.

If we have a system like that, it should totally be equal regardless of gender.

But if we should have a system like that, I cannot answer that.