The Impact of World War II on Occupational Opportunity and Choice
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Today’s older adults grew up in an era marked, perhaps defined, by World War II. People’s occupational choices are shaped by the opportunities they have and the agency they exert. War may limit the opportunities or agency available to people and thus influence their occupations. Purpose: How did World War II shape people’s occupational opportunities and agency? Methods: This study was a cross-narrative review of nine occupational biographies. The biographies are of individuals in their 80s and 90s, now living in Canada. These individuals were interviewed (4-8 interviews of 1-2 hours each) about the occupations in which they engaged throughout their lives. Audiotapes of the interviews were transcribed verbatim, then analyzed inductively using holistic content and holistic form approaches. Life course and occupational science theoretical perspectives informed analyses. Each completed biography was approved by the individual. The nine completed biographies were re-analyzed to see whether and how occupational barriers and opportunities were related to the war. Results: Productive occupations were the most blatantly affected. Several young men and women served in the military – either voluntarily or by conscription, and this governed most occupations. Other participants lived under foreign military occupation, which constrained opportunity and freedom of choice regarding many occupations. Even those who remained civilians in Canada were affected. One woman spoke of the opportunity for paid work that arose from the war. The men were at war, so women, even married ones, were hired to work in the factories. Less obvious was the impact of the war on non-work occupations. For example rationing and scarcity forced people to focus additional time and effort on domestic chores like meal preparation, yet new leisure opportunities arose for one girl in the form of entertaining the soldiers at military canteens. Discussion: World War II was a turning point in the lives of all nine individuals. In some instances it offered opportunities for occupational choice, but at times it constrained their agency in selecting occupations. These opportunities and constraints were mediated, to some extent, by the age, sex, nationality, and geographical context of the participants. Implications: World events shape the occupational opportunities of individuals by influencing both opportunity and agency.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".