Choosing a senior maths subject is truly like finding the Goldilocks option. Too difficult, and students may become overwhelmed and underperform. Too easy, and they may miss out on the challenge, preparation or assumed knowledge they require for their future career pathways. They need the subject that is just right.

Across Australia, thousands of students are currently choosing their Year 11 subjects. Students may think they’re just choosing a maths subject, but they are also shaping the university courses and careers most immediately available after school.

For most Year 11 subjects, the choice is relatively straightforward: students either choose chemistry, for example, or they do not. Maths is different, with multiple choices available. This can make subject selection difficult.

Finding the right fit

Let’s start with an important point: not every student should study the most advanced mathematics available.

Research shows choosing a maths subject that is too difficult can increase a student’s anxiety, lower their confidence and reduce their enjoyment of the subject. This may take away from their learning in other subjects or their general enjoyment of their senior years.

Instead, the right maths subject depends on a student’s interests, strengths and future goals.

For some students, a general or standard maths subject will provide the foundational mathematical knowledge they will use throughout their lives and careers. For others, advanced mathematics courses are a better fit.

What unis typically require

For some university courses, particularly in STEM, your senior maths subjects can determine whether you meet entry requirements or arrive with the assumed knowledge needed to succeed.

Many uni degrees in fields such as engineering, physics, computer science, mathematics, and actuarial studies require, or strongly recommend, advanced mathematics. Even when it isn’t a formal prerequisite, students often find first-year university maths requires the knowledge learnt in these subjects.

But what if you’re not looking at a STEM degree — are advanced maths subjects worth your time?

Advanced mathematics isn’t always just about content. Studying the subject develops analytical reasoning, logical thinking, problem solving, and mathematical modelling skills. These are valued across many professions, from economics and finance to business, technology, and data-driven industries.

Support in earlier years

One thing many families often don’t realise is that not all year 10 students will have every senior maths option available to them in years 11 and 12.

Across Australia, schools organise mathematics differently. However, most schools stream students into different maths pathways from as early as the start of Year 7. Those pathways often determine the content students study, and whether they are eligible to take advanced maths courses in the senior years.

This means that, by the time students are choosing their Year 11 subjects, some options may already have become much harder to access.

For families, it is important to ask questions about how maths pathways operate in their child’s school, rather than assuming students can easily access higher levels of maths later.

For students with STEM aspirations who are finding maths difficult in Years 7 to 10, seeking support early is important. Speaking with teachers, understanding pathway requirements, and addressing learning gaps before senior subject selection can help keep more options open.

Other pathways

The good news is there are still options for students to pursue STEM careers later on, even if they don’t study advanced maths in Year 12. Most universities now offer bridging mathematics, foundation studies and enabling programs for students who discover a passion for STEM after leaving school. However, these often involve additional study or a longer route to the same destination.

Some unis are also investing in initiatives that encourage students — particularly girls and students from underrepresented communities — to see themselves in STEM before they even reach Year 11. The path may look different, but the door is rarely locked.

One useful guiding principle for choosing maths subjects in Year 12 is this: students should choose the highest level that keeps future pathways open while remaining realistic about their interest, commitment and prior achievement.

Bronwyn Reid O'Connor, Lecturer in Mathematics Education, University of Sydney and Ben Zunica, Lecturer in Mathematics Education, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The senior years of high school can be very stressful. For many students, they are dominated by exams and pressure to gain a certain ATAR for certain university courses.

For some students, perhaps for health or family reasons – this pathway isn’t possible. But this does not mean uni isn’t an option.

Students have historically had to wait until after high school to complete a different pathway such as the Skills for Tertiary Admissions Test, a vocational educational training certificate, portfolio entry or enabling pathway.

Enabling courses can prepare students for undergraduate study. And as our new report shows, it’s possible for students to do an enabling program as part of their high school work.

What are enabling programs?

Enabling programs are courses that qualify students for undergraduate university study. They are also known as “bridging” or “fee-free uni ready” programs.

They teach both academic skills as well as subject knowledge and qualify students to enter a wide range of undergraduate degrees for example education, nursing, science, creative arts and criminology.

Since the 1990s, they have specifically supported students from equity and underrepresented backgrounds, or those with disrupted education.

Many enabling programs are run through universities. So, students complete them after they leave school (sometimes directly after school and sometimes many years after) . But they can also be run in schools, while students are in year 11 or 12.
Each universities has slightly different qualifying criteria for entry into the program based on English competency and school recommendations.

How do enabling programs work in schools?

In 2026, seven universities offer structured in-school programs, targeting regional, remote, and equity cohort schools.

Developed between universities and schools, these programs build academic skills, such as time management, research, academic reading and writing and maths. They can also focus on discipline-specific knowledge and on skills such as confidence and critical thinking.

The curriculum, designed by universities, is embedded in the school timetable in year 11 and 12 and taught by school teachers with university support. Some programs are also on uni campus outside school hours.

These programs are aimed at students who have uni aspirations, but have experienced disadvantage or have not thrived via an ATAR pathway.

Our research

We did an analysis of enabling programs delivered by 94 high schools around Australia. This included surveys of 2,000 students enrolled between 2021 and 2023.

We found 79% of the group completed the program and 660 students progressed to uni in 2022–2024.

Of those who went onto university study, 75% continued into second year. This compares to 79% for ATAR entrants.

At university, students who had done an enabling course had an average pass rate of 76%. recent school leavers who entered uni with an ATAR had an average pass rate of 88%.

What do students say?

In our survey, students repeatedly spoke of being under enormous pressure at school before choosing an enabling pathway. ATAR struggles and stress were a key reason for this. As one student noted:

I struggled a lot with ATAR. I did well in classes and assignments but fell through with the exams.

Another stated:

I dropped out of [the] ATAR [pathway] due to stress and poor mental health, but I still wanted to attend university.

Other students spoke of how the enabling program better suited their particular health or disability needs. One student with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder told us:

I found [school program] more effective […] as the learning was a lot more practical, and the learning and content felt more in-depth.

Students spoke of the program giving them “faith in myself” and a “head start” before they began undergraduate studies. As another student told us, “[the program] explained exactly what universities expect of you”.

What now?

Some politicians have criticised enabling programs in schools, saying they are not challenging enough and do not prepare students for university study. Our findings suggest the opposite.

This study suggests governments and schools need to increasingly recognise there is no single route that suits every student.

One limitation of the study is that this study did not have available data on graduates who went on to study at universities outside the partner institutions.

For schools and universities considering these programs, guidance from our research highlights how the strongest outcomes are linked to programs that are taught within the school timetable. This is because it reduces barriers to attendance and provides support and monitoring from their teachers.

Effective programs also need support from the university partners who provide teacher training and academic guidance. Information for schools on how to set up an enabling program with a university is further explained in our research.

Fiona Navin, Selena Dhondea-Tenakov, Joanne Lisciandro, Johanna Nieuwoudt, Anita Maclaurin, Fabiane Ramos, Shaz Attree and Michael Howie all contributed to the research report described in this article.

Angela Jones, Senior Lecturer Access and Equity, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Under the Morrison government’s Job-ready Graduates scheme, the price of arts degrees more than doubled to over A$50,000.

But while attention has understandably been focused on undergraduate degrees, what has happened at the postgraduate level?

In a new research paper we explore how the scheme slashed study costs for many postgraduate students, especially in nursing.

‘Full-fee’ versus ‘student contribution’ places

Since the late 1980s, universities have offered domestic students full-fee places in postgraduate courses. Full-fee places receive no government subsidy, and universities set the fees.

In 2024, the average university revenue per full-fee student place was $33,000 a year. Students can finance these fees with a FEE-HELP loan.

Full-fee places exist alongside postgraduate government-subsidised “Commonwealth supported places” (which are also used for undergraduates). For these places, the government provides a subsidy and students pay a price-capped student contribution.

These contributions are high – currently $17,399 a year in arts, business and law – but much less than the average full-fee rate.

Fixed numbers of subsidised postgraduate places

Before Job-ready Graduates, universities could offer postgraduate students Commonwealth supported places. But for each university the government capped numbers in total and by discipline.

By contrast, there were no restrictions around full-fee postgraduate places. As the chart shows, enrolments in full-fee places grew in most, although not all, years up to the mid-2010s.

The two largest postgraduate fields are teaching and business.

This reflected more people seeking to advance their careers through postgraduate study, as well as postgraduate degrees becoming a possible or required entry point for some professions such as psychology.

The cheaper Commonwealth supported places saved students money over full-fee courses, but produced anomalies across the system. Some universities were allocated thousands of places but others only dozens. Frustrated universities complained some competitors had Commonwealth supported places while they could only offer full-fee places in the same course.

Job-ready Graduates and student places

Job-ready Graduates, which was announced in 2020 and started in 2021, changed this situation. Instead of specifically allocating postgraduate Commonwealth supported places, the government put funding into a single, flexible grant shared with undergraduate courses.

For universities and their students this created new opportunities, but also new trade-offs: between undergraduate and postgraduate places, and between subsidised and full-fee postgraduate places.

Framing it differently, universities faced potential choices between opportunities for first and second-time students for government-subsidised higher education, and between lower and higher total revenue per student.

Increased postgraduate Commonwealth supported places was not an inevitable outcome, but it happened.

Between 2019 (the old system’s last normal year) and 2024, the number of postgraduate Commonwealth supported places increased by a third to more than 57,000. By contrast the number of full-fee postgraduate places at public universities fell by 11%, to about 41,000 places.

Which courses benefited?

Growth in postgraduate Commonwealth supported places occurred across many courses. But nursing was a standout, more than doubling to nearly 8,000 places. Specialities such as critical care and mental health nursing showed large increases.

Price differences between subsidised and full-fee places are very large in these fields. For example, for a Graduate Certificate of Critical Care Nursing at Deakin University a full-fee place costs $14,700 in 2026, while a Commonwealth supported place costs just $2,639. The University of Newcastle markets its Master of Mental Health Nursing as up to 75% cheaper, costing $5,117 with Commonwealth support.

Job-ready Graduates cut nursing student contributions to boost demand. While undergraduate nursing demand did increase, a discount was never likely attract students without prior healthcare interests. But for someone who is already a nurse, a cheap Commonwealth supported place could make a big difference to their decision to pursue postgraduate study.

University reasoning

Students prefer lower fees, but this still leaves the question of why universities offered more nursing places.

Our analysis of postgraduate enrolment trends was part of a broader project exploring university decision-making around Commonwealth supported places. As part of this project, we interviewed university leaders and officials.

A consistent theme was they wanted to prioritise postgraduate Commonwealth supported places in social service occupations with relatively low wages, such as nursing, teaching and social work.

Look at undergrad demand

While universities had social service reasons for offering more postgraduate places in certain fields, another important factor affected decision-making under Job-ready Graduates.

This was a major decline in domestic undergraduate demand. Fewer Year 12 students and more people choosing work over study in a strong labour market were both factors.

For many universities, this abolished the trade-off between undergraduate and postgraduate places. They had more funding for Commonwealth supported places than they could use.

Our interview research found universities placed a high priority on fully utilising their government funding. They saw this as a government expectation. They feared that consistent failure to use funding would see it cut. Offering additional postgraduate places was one way to use more government funding.

Can this last?

The social service reasons for offering postgraduate Commonwealth supported places will remain. But with undergraduate demand now recovering, boosted by renewed growth in Year 12 enrolments, the trade-offs with postgraduate places are returning.

At the same time, the government has introduced legislation putting tougher caps on how many Commonwealth supported students universities can take. This will see some universities need to reduce their Commonwealth supported student intake.

We cannot predict exactly how universities will navigate this changed environment. But postgraduate Commonwealth supported places have probably reached their peak as priorities are likely to move back to undergraduate education.

Andrew Norton, Professor of Higher Education Policy, Monash University and Ren-Hao Xu, Lecturer, Graduate School of Education, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Martin Scorsese recently announced he will be joining generative artificial intelligence (AI) company Black Forest Labs. He said he would embrace AI for storyboarding – the practice of creating a visual outline in the early stages of developing a movie or TV show.

The announcement was met with significant online backlash and sentiments about how AI has the potential to “ruin cinema”.

The announcement follows recent viral footage showing graduate students at multiple college ceremonies booing commencement speakers who praised generative AI. Speaking at the University of Florida, property developer Gloria Caulfield declared AI is “the next Industrial Revolution”. The humanities graduates, already burdened with debt and job insecurity, responded with a torrent of boos.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta were also booed as they sang the praises of AI at graduation ceremonies. Their bemused reactions reflect a growing generational divide when it comes to AI adoption.

Who’s actually enthusiastic about new tech?

It’s often assumed younger generations are the most enthusiastic adopters of new technologies. Yet numerous studies already show gen Z is pushing back against AI.

A recent Gallup study found gen Z is

not convinced that AI enhances creativity or critical thinking, and the majority believe it may come at a cost, particularly to learning.

In contrast, a 2025 Thomson Reuters survey found the most “ambitious group” predicting AI would enter the workplace were baby boomers.

Baby boomers and AI

Baby boomers bridged the gap between analogue technologies like the typewriter and digital innovations like word processors. The labour market was defined by long hours and administrative filing.

This explains why, according to survey data, many boomers see AI as a revolutionary tool. They think AI not only saves time, but is more intuitive than the technologies they once relied upon.

Technology writer Josiah Gogarty argues boomers also find AI amusing. He points to the rise of low-quality AI content or slop on Facebook, “lapped up by the platform’s older audience”.

Yet for younger generations, AI presents an existential threat to their livelihoods.

When booed by the attendant students, Borchetta doubled down: “Deal with it. Do something about it. It’s a tool, make it work for you.”

But his comments ignore the structural conditions that allowed older generations to prosper in ways younger generations cannot. Borchetta and other boomers came of age during a period when human labour carried significantly more economic and social value than it does today.

The very systems that made these individuals wealthy have weakened labour security while removing the professional pathways that allowed them to thrive in the first place. The message “adapt or get left behind” therefore feels disingenuous to a generation now faced with a future defined by constant disruption and reskilling.

Gen Z’s loss of self worth

The issue is not just with a dire job market. Many young people are left feeling as though they no longer have any meaningful stake in a system that demands their compliance while it systematically engineers their obsolescence.

As social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff puts it, we are living in a

harsh social habitat produced by a decades-old regime of neoliberal market economics in which our sense of self-worth and need for self-determination are routinely thwarted.

Indeed, younger generations face a unique existential crisis as algorithms increasingly shape taste, preferences, decisions and more. Teens are “living inside a contradiction”, encouraged to embrace AI while they report it’s hurting their learning.

In the 20th century, baby boomers had greater agency over how much technology was integrated into their lives, and there was more opportunity to opt out. Studies show older generations were able to evaluate their adoption of technology based on factors like “compatibility with lifestyle” and affordability. Email and mobile phones weren’t viewed as essential to everyday life, nor was upgrading to a clock radio or a TV with a remote control considered as “inevitable” as having an AI chatbot on your smartphone is today.

Today, AI and algorithms feel unavoidable to younger generations, because they’re built into the very fabric of society. Tech CEOs argue the dominance of AI is inevitable, but the people in power aren’t engaging in dialogue with younger generations.

In an age when it feels as though we’ve resigned ourselves to a future determined by AI and algorithms, younger generations now want to reclaim agency over their futures, rather than just blindly embrace AI.

The vocal gen Z backlash against AI should be a reminder to everyone that alternatives to an AI-saturated future are still possible.

Siobhan Lyons, Scholar in Media and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Today, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese laid out how his government plans to manage artificial intelligence (AI) and ensure the rapidly advancing technology works in Australia’s interest.

In a major speech at the University of Sydney, Albanese declared that AI “is a bigger challenge and a bigger opportunity than social media”, and that Australia must move now to determine its “social licence” and capture the opportunities it presents.

Key to the government’s plans is the immediate establishment of an Office of AI within the prime minister’s own department and the creation of new national standards for AI.

This news comes as a group of leading economists and AI researchers urge policymakers and tech companies around the world to prepare now for how the technology could reshape the global economy on a much bigger and faster scale than the Industrial Revolution did.

A new office and new standards

Albanese said the new Office of AI will coordinate AI policy across government, rather than leaving individual departments to develop their own approaches. This will be similar to how the government developed coordinated approaches for other significant technologies such as civil aviation and genetics.

The office will also help coordinate the design of new national standards for AI.

These standards, which Albanese said will be legislated early next year, will build on the government’s previously announced expectations for data centres. They will, for example, create a new legal obligation for large data centre operators to underwrite their own power supply, not increase household power prices, and minimise water usage.

Other countries are also grappling with how best to handle this issue. Indeed, hours before Albanese’s speech, New York enforced a one-year moratorium on the building of new data centres.

There are growing calls for Australia to do the same.

But Albanese suggested his government would not be heeding these calls. As he said:

No government can turn back the clock or press pause on all of this. Nor would we want to. That would only mean cutting ourselves off from the opportunities that are there to be seized.

Protection for artists and creative industries

Albanese also reiterated his government’s commitment to the “strongest possible protection” for artists, musicians and journalists, who should retain ownership and control of their works in the AI age.

Last year the Labor government rejected a copyright exemption that would allow AI companies to use protected content for free when developing AI models.

In contrast to other jurisdictions (such as the United States, European Union and Japan), Australian AI developers will still have to pay for creators’ content.

This approach is fair. But the government has since been grappling with how to ensure this policy does not disadvantage Australian AI developers and the payments reach actual creators.

In his speech today, Albanese promised laws to address this. But he did not provide any clarity on what they might look like.

Where does Australia sit internationally?

By establishing the AI Office and developing national standards for AI, Australia is trying to position itself as an international leader in AI policy.

But Albanese’s claim that Australia “will be the first country in the world to bring [AI] issues into a single, national framework” is overstated.

For example, the European Union adopted the AI Act back in 2024. This established strict regulation especially for high-risk AI. It also established the EU AI Office to coordinate the implementation of the AI Act and protect people against the risks of the technology.

This year, however, the EU Commission introduced amendments to weaken some of the requirements in the AI Act and postponed certain implementation deadlines.

This “watering down” of the AI Act is intended to boost AI innovation in the EU. It comes after AI developers have been complaining that strict EU regulation slows down AI development.

Other countries seem to also favour a pro-innovation approach, instead of strong regulation. South Korea, for example, has introduced an AI Basic Act for high impact AI systems, but its rules are much less strict than in the EU.

Japan has opted for voluntary guidance for the AI sector.

So Australia’s decision not to introduce hard regulation (such as mandatory AI guardrails) but rather rely on softer standards and national-level coordination appears to align with international trends.

A starting point

The new standards and office announced today are a good starting point for managing AI. So too is Albanese’s promise to protect creative industries whose content has been used by AI companies to train their large language models without consent.

However, we don’t yet know how, or how well, the government will do this.

Much more work and leadership from the government is needed – especially in relation to mitigating the wide array risks of AI, from misinformation and deceptive deep-fakes, anti-democratic propaganda, health AI apps causing health safety issues, and public security challenges.

And while the government hopes its new AI standards will allay community fears about data centres, the news out of New York is likely to only fuel the push in Australia to hit “pause” on them.

Rita Matulionyte, Associate Professor in Law, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

I remember watching an interview with actor Sam Neill, who has died aged 78, saying “Good screen acting hints at secrets. At other lives underneath the veneer.”

At the time, I wondered what were these secrets Neill was referring to.

I just had to look at the vast body of Neill’s work, the characters he played, and how he played them to answer that question.

Claiming him as Australian

The actor was born Nigel John Dermot Neill in 1947 in Northern Ireland before moving to New Zealand as a child. In the time-honoured tradition of Australia claiming New Zealand talent as our own, it was when he made the move across the pond that he first found fame and the launching pad for his international career.

A law school dropout, he soon found acting to be his calling while at university, acting in a number of plays before moving to New Zealand television and his first starring role in the action thriller feature Sleeping Dogs (1977).

This film got him noticed in Australia where he picked up a small role in television series The Sullivans before landing his first major motion picture – My Brilliant Career (1979), opposite another emerging talent of the Australian screen, Judy Davis.

He made a plethora of less widely known films like Just Out of Reach (1979) and Attack Force Z (1982), while also appearing in television shows such as Young Ramsey.

His international break out film was, unusually, playing the son of Satan in the quite schlocky Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981).

But the film was commercially successful, and the role opened up many doors for Neill who spent the rest of his professional career criss-crossing continents and acting in films and television series in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and his original home, New Zealand.

As often happens with our Australian talent, they have to be recognised overseas before we recognise them back home.

So back in Australia we came to embrace Neill in landmark films such as playing Micheal Chamberlain opposite Meryl Streep in Evil Angels (1988) and opposite a young Nicole Kidman in Dead Calm (1989).

At this time, he met with producer Cubby Broccoli to be considered as the replacement for Roger Moore in the James Bond series, but unfortunately lost out to Timothy Dalton.

Neill may have been the greatest Bond we never had.

The actor who didn’t show he was acting

Perhaps the role he is best remembered for is as the star of the original Jurassic Park (1993) and sequels Jurassic Park III (2001) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022), where he played renowned palaeontologist Alan Grant.

This role is a great example of how refined his acting talents were.

At the beginning of Jurassic Park, Grant is quite aloof and cold to those around him, and visibly uncomfortable around the park owner’s grandchildren. As the drama unfolds, Grant gradually shifts to becoming the children’s protective mentor risking his life for them.

Neill doesn’t do this through dramatic speeches or over-the-top visual displays. Instead he gives us a performance of subtle shifts in the character’s behaviour.

Neill’s ability at nuance made his roles so believable and authentic.

When we view his body of work, we can see Neill’s characters always have a significant level of intellect and astuteness. He was often cast in roles of men of intelligence, quiet authority or class. Neill was the reasonable, decent man everyone looked at for stability and strength when disaster fell, and all others were losing their heads.

He had this understated quality to many of his roles. Not being the overt method actor like many of his generation, he chose restraint and reason, embellishing his characters with a feeling of genuine realism.

Neill was able to relate emotion through slight facial expressions or minute vocal inflections. He could be equally delighted, menacing or upset with just a glance.

The quality of the man

Neill took many risks with the roles he took on. His versatility and range meant he could be equally good in a historical drama (Sirens, 1994) as he was in a comedy (Death in Brunswick, 1990) or even horror (In the Mouth of Madness, 1994) and sci-fi (Event Horizon, 1997).

It shows the quality of the man that Neill was as willing to appear in blockbusters as he was in small, independent films, to help and coach the next generation of filmmakers.

In ironic casting, the Sam Neill who dropped out of law school to become an actor played his final role as a lawyer, in the acclaimed three seasons of the Australian courtroom series The Twelve (2022–25).

In 2023, Neill said “I’m not afraid to die, but it would annoy me”.

For him it may have been annoying. Those who admired him will be meeting this moment with profound sadness and gratitude for the exceptional work he leaves behind.

Neill uncovered the secrets in the lives of all of his characters, presented them to us in his own inimitable style and made even the most ordinary moments feel quietly extraordinary.

Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer, Media Studies and Production, University of Southern Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Female farm managers are hidden in plain sight in ancient Roman texts, mentioned in laws, literature and grave inscriptions across five centuries. Modern historians have generally assumed they were housekeepers, in charge of domestic tasks and household meals, and segregated from the productive business of the farm.

My new paper, published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, challenges this assumption.

In fact, there is evidence to suggest that many Roman female farm managers supervised wine production and other processes vital to farming and profits.

A false lead

A farming manual written by the Roman writer Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella in the 1st century CE is a window to the roles of the female manager.

An upper class landowner himself, Columella lists the responsibilities of farm managers, who were probably enslaved. The male manager was termed the vilicus, and the female manager the vilica, terms derived from their roles at the “villa”.

But many historians reading this text have been side-tracked by a false lead: Columella begins his section on the vilica with a long quote from the Greek philosopher Xenophon, who wrote in Athens more than four centuries earlier.

The “natural” role of women, according to Xenophon, was to work indoors. Therefore in his discussion, the ideal upper-class married woman is depicted staying inside her town house to supervise the domestic work of the slaves.

The Greek writer is not discussing farm workers. In fact, Columella says four times that these ideas are not his own, but those of Xenophon, writing long ago.

Columella lists a completely different set of responsibilities for the vilica on a Roman farm: most importantly, the making of wine and olive oil, which were highly valuable commodities – the backbone of landowners’ profits.

In his description of the vilica’s duties, Columella includes the extraction of the juice from grapes during the harvest; adding flavourings and preservatives such as salt, wormwood, fennel or boiled grape-juice; and overseeing successful fermentation into wine.

According to Columella, the vilica also managed the processing of other farm products to make them long-lasting and profitable, such as turning inedible olives into olive oil for sale.

From archaeology we know that production of wine or oil, using huge machines in substantial buildings, could reach 50,000 to 100,000 litres per year, or even more. The vilica was therefore responsible for overseeing large-scale work essential to the operation of the estate.

Calling on the gods

Correct sacrifices to the gods were seen as vital to the success of the farm. Archaeology has uncovered altars for offerings in Roman wine-making buildings.

Wine-making in the Roman world was a precarious process, due to uncontrolled temperatures, bacteria or oxygenation. Wine could easily go mouldy or turn into vinegar.

A striking element of Columella’s account is that he includes carrying out offerings to avert such a disaster in his instructions for the female farm manager.

Looking for more clues

Other texts contain barely more than a mention of the vilica, revealing only her presence.

But we can still put together some clues.

Legal writings on inheritance, quoting the 1st century BCE jurist Trebatius, include her in the instrumentum fundi – whatever (including enslaved personnel) is required for productive work, gathering and preserving produce of the estate.

Another aristocratic landowner and writer, Cato the Elder, living two centuries before Columella, lists both the female and the male farm manager as essential staff for a vineyard or olive farm.

He devotes only one small section to outlining the female farm manager’s tasks, but a close look shows these are not predominantly domestic. Cato includes keeping poultry and processing of seasonal farm products. Although he does include supervision of cleaning, this could refer to maintenance of work spaces such as stables and wine making buildings, an integral part of estate management – and also listed by Columella among the vilica’s duties.

Cato also gives the vilica the responsibility for making sacrifices to the gods for the success of the farm. She must regularly offer garlands at the altar “for abundance”, he writes.

A Roman mosaic showing estate work in different seasons depicts a scene of sacrifices for abundant crops to the god Jupiter (in his Celtic form as a sky and weather god). A woman is shown holding an offering of garlands, just as Cato instructs. Beside her are a jug for wine offerings and a male figure.

Perhaps this mosaic shows the vilica and vilicus, both essential to the success of annual harvests. While such images of female figures are rare, one fragmentary wall painting from Rome shows a female overseeing wine-making workers, just as Columella describes.

This combined body of evidence suggests we should expand outdated understandings of the roles that Roman women played in farm production, the dominant sector of ancient economies.

No vilica has left us an account of her work in her own words. But by paying careful attention to the evidence, we can hear an echo of her voice.

Tamara Lewit, Honorary Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne

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