The Gender Wage Gap within the Agricultural Sector: A Case from South Lebanon

Agriculture is considered an important energizer of a country’s economic growth and poverty alleviation efforts. However, this sector is underperforming especially in developing countries in part because women, who are often a crucial human resource in agriculture and the rural economy, face difficulties that reduce their productivity and their effective involvement. This paper sheds light on the gender pay gap in Lebanon, in general, and the agriculture sector of South Lebanon, in particular. Exploratory quantitative analysis is applied using a convenient sample of 385 agricultural employees chosen from the Lebanese agricultural institutions in South Lebanon. The paper objectives include the assessment of the wage gap in the agricultural sector in South Lebanon, analyzing opinions towards the wage gap in South Lebanon, quantifying the impact of the gender pay gap on women, identifying the causes that lead to the existence of a wage gap, and the exploration of the existence of wage gap discrimination. Findings showed that the wage gap in the agricultural sector is affected by experience, age, family responsibilities, and physical ability which is a vital factor affecting the wage difference, while the nationality and the educational level had no effect on wage gap. Also, the study showed that there is a 40% wage gap, where the numbers of male and female employees with their average hourly wages were considered which is a significant difference in pay. The outcomes are important for NGOs, policy makers and rural authorities to plan innovatively and capitalize on the untapped female workforce in the agricultural sector of the country.

the monthly salary for working women is 660 thousand LBP while for working men, it is 702 thousand LBP. Thus, there is really a gender-based discrimination pay gap of around 6.0% that prevails within the Lebanese territory (Yaacoub & Badre, 2011). Moreover, Dah, Ben Sita, & Dah (2009) asserted that women in the Lebanese banking sector suffer more from intermediate discrimination while being in the average years of service. So, they concluded that both the -sticky floor‖ and the -glass ceiling‖, although present, are not the dominant wage gap discrimination factors. This fact was investigated again in Hejase, Hejase, and Hejase (2015) where the study had shown that the principal significantt gender discrimination occurs while climbing up the organizational ladder.
The main purpose of this paper is to present a fresh insight into the gender pay gap in Lebanon, in general, and South Lebanon, in particular, paying attention to the agriculture sector in specific.
Exploratory analysis is applied to the data collected from a sample taken from the Lebanese agricultural institutions in South Lebanon in order to highlight issues related to: • Detection of the wage gap in the agricultural sector in South Lebanon.
• Assessment of agricultural employees' opinions towards the wage gap in South Lebanon.
• Quantifying the impact of the gender pay gap on women in the agricultural sector.
• Identifying the causes that lead to the existence of a wage gap.
• Showing that the wage gap discrimination does exist even against Lebanese labor laws.
This paper provides data and statistically supported evidence that may be relevant to the authorities and can help them develop new policies that may contribute to reducing gender gap discrimination.

Background
The domain of social economy has adopted -Legal Acts‖ oriented toward the prevention of the gender wage gap, however the same Act is considered an illegal act. For example, within the labor laws -The Equal Pay Act of 1963‖ in the USA aims at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (Wilkins, 2012).
Definitely, according to Carson (2016), the gender wage gap is a serious worldwide issue. Although the modern life makes us believe that the wage gap is shrinking; however, -in practice, progress in reducing gender pay gaps has been too slow‖ (ILO, 2018, p. 98). It is still in existence due to the social believes that didn't end it, and the many hidden factors that continue to foment the wage gap and help it to remain.
In 2003, Yoo defined wage gap as a difference in pay between women and men who exert the same level of human capital doing the same job. Similarly, Blau and Kahn (2007) stated that although the tendency to discriminate against women is decreasing, women continue to encounter discrimination in the labor market as evidenced by the fact that women's wages continue to be less than men's salaries in the same job and same qualifications. Practical evidence for the wage gap has been reported in different parts of the world. In the European Union, women in general, earn around 16% less per hour than men according to the European Commission report (2014). In addition, the same report details that the gender pay gap is below 10% in Slovenia, Malta,Poland,Italy,Luxembourg,and Romania,but broader than 20% in Hungary,Slovakia,Czech Republic,Germany,Austria,and Estonia. Similarly,in Switzerland, a study conducted on a sample of 1100 professionals (85% females) resulted in that 79% of the women believed that their career advancement is affected by a determinant factor which is gender, as well as 73% of them acceded that there are barriers to women advancement in upper management, and even though a woman gets to the top managerial hierarchy she will still earn less than in Britain, according to Hejase et al. (2013a), a female working full-time earns just 82% of her colleague's salary, and a woman with average qualifications during her life suffers a pay gap of about £250,000. Moreover, in Australia, Vecchio, Scuffham, and Hilton (2013) stated that there is a wage gap of 16.7% that remains unexplained, even after adjusting endowments. Undeniably, women have a high level of dissatisfaction due to the unfair treatment at work which leads to a decrease in their efficiency at work (Adesina-Uthman, 2017). Moreover, the glass ceiling (invisible barrier that prevents more than a few women from reaching the top levels of management) impediment prevents women from developing their career path quickly and contributes to lowering their productivity and growth mainly due to the different barriers that oppose their advancement, including cultural norms, stereotypes, and employer policies and practices (Akpinar-Sposito, 2012).
A study realized in Canada by Vincent (2013) showed that in 2011, the average hourly wage of women working full-time was 87% that of men. Vincent stated four hypotheses that may explain the wage gap namely, the productive characteristics (education, number of working hours, experience …), the educational and professional choices that women make, gender stereotypes and their impact on young people choices in educational paths and career, and family responsibilities and childbearing, called it -Family Gap‖ where it affects the productivity and human capital of mothers due to the temporary removal from the workforce. However, besides these four aforementioned factors, Vincent did emphasize that the more significant portion of the wage gap remains unexplained.
The European Commission (2014) made a study which focus more on the gender wage gap within the European Union and identified the factors that may cause the difference in wage. The study revealed that women are over represented in certain sectors, such as the health sector, where 80% of all workers are women, and when women are the majority, their skills and competencies are often under-valued, and the result is a low pay. In addition, the study highlighted the family responsibilities which force women to work fewer hours and make them prefer part-time jobs, which means less money to earn, difficult career development and fewer rewards; so, forcing women to remain as low-level workers.
Furthermore, Falk and Voigt (2006) made a study in six countries (Australia, Austria, Philippines, Germany, Switzerland and the UK) which reveals that women's representation at the executive management level of organizations does not exceed 13% and that the -glass ceiling‖ is prevalent across all six countries but varies in thickness.
Various negative consequences may arise due to the disparity between men and women earnings; for example, when a woman earns a lower wage, this may increase her financial dependence on the male partner which may increase the possibility of domestic violence (Blau & Kahn, 2000). In general, Arab countries display a low level of achieving parity; the overall worldwide gender gap had been closed by 68.6%, while the Middle East and North Africa region has closed only 60.5% of the gender gap as the Global Index report recorded (World Economic Forum, 2020). Furthermore, -despite some advances in women's economic equality in Qatar, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates, at the present rate, the region's 39% gender gap (compared to 33% in South Asia and 32% in Sub-Saharan Africa) will take another 356 years to close‖ (Abirafeh, 2017). Moreover, the UAE ranks second in the Middle East for www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/jbtp Journal of Business Theory and Practice Vol. 8, No. 4, 2020 36 Published by SCHOLINK INC.
wage equality for similar work, but ranked 120 out of 144 countries overall in 2017 in the Global Gender Gap Report (World Economic Forum, 2020, p. 26). A new law was approved to ensure women are paid an equal wage to their male colleagues by the UAE Cabinet in April 2018, which is an excellent step in the closing gap journey (Duncan, 2018).
In Lebanon, Hejase et al. (2013a) stated that -women in Lebanese institutions seem to be able to reach acceptable levels of seniority, but they are still way behind when it comes to top managerial positions which involve strategic planning and decision making‖. Also, the authors concluded that the first reason for women to be still considered as less equal and less competent than men is that they are not allowed to participate in top managerial positions.
Furthermore, Yaacoub and Badre (2011) reported that women's average salary in Lebanon was lower than men's average salary and women's median salary was 50 thousand LBP less than men's median As for the gender wage gap within the agricultural sector; women cover about 43 percent of the global agricultural labour force in developing countries, thus they are essential contributors to the agricultural and rural economies. Moreover, evidence from a sample of 14 countries shows that on average women are paid 28 percent less than males in rural areas (Raney et al. & Doss, 2011).
The contribution of women to agriculture is unmistakably significant; however, most policy makers and practitioners consider females as less efficient crop producers (Quisumbing, 1995). Furthermore, different studies in countries like Nepal, Nigeria, and Uganda reported evidence for a gender gap in agricultural productivity. A study in Nepal inferred that male labor is more productive in agriculture than female labor (Thapa, 2008). Another done in Nigeria and Uganda concluded that persistent lower crop productivity is habitual on female-owned plots (Peterman, Quisumbing, Behrman, & Nkonya, July 2010). Garikipati (2008) reported that among other reasons women are obliged to take agricultural work because there are little non-agricultural opportunities available to them. Moreover, the everyday demands of women's domestic activities may mean that off-farm job puts greater sacrifices for them than for men. Thus, they usually allocate more time to off-farm work causing their agricultural labor productivity to be lower than men's which indicates that family responsibilities are at large one of the causes of the gender wage gap. In general, Sneyers and Vandeplas (2015) stated that traditionally women are less productive in agriculture than men and the gender gap in agricultural fields is mostly not due to the fact that females are worse farmers than men, but rather due to gender-based differences in access to input and output markets, or lower bargaining power. The fact that women have less access to productive resources than men conveyed that within African households the plots controlled by women for all crops have lower yields than plots controlled by males (Udry, Hoddinot, Alderman, & Haddad, 1995). Likewise, in Korea, a study reported that although women are actively involved in most of the agricultural work, men still own the land, control women's labor, and make agricultural decisions (Hwang, Ellanie, Paris, & Choi, 2011). However, in their most recent policy brief, Rodgers and Akram-Lodhi (2019), based on original research in five countries (Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and United Republic of Tanzania), shows that -gender gaps in agricultural productivity do not arise because women are less efficient farmers but because they experience inequitable access to agricultural inputs, including family labor, high-yield crops, pesticides and fertilizer‖ (p. 1).
The calculated Gini coefficient places Lebanon at a rank of 129 from 141 countries in terms of income equality (Saliba, Sayegh, & Salman, February, 2017), adding to this the extremely low female labor participation makes the gap between the groups in general and the gender gap in particular wider. Here it is worth recalling that the Gini coefficient is often used to measure income inequality where, 0 corresponds to perfect income equality (i.e., everyone has the same income) and 1 corresponds to perfect income inequality (i.e., one person has all the income, while everyone else has zero income).
According to the World Economic Forum report (2020), gender parity in pay is proving hard to achieve.
The pay differentials between men and women are a persistent form of gender inequality in the workplace and the Global Gender Gap Index 2020 finds that the progress towards closing the gender gap on this aspect has stalled. Table 1

Agricultural Sector Overview in Lebanon
Lebanon stands out in the Middle East as an ideal location for agricultural activity for its moderate climate, rich soil, and abundant water resources (IDAL, 2020a). Significant and central agricultural zones and regions for crops and meadows include the Bekaa area (east Lebanon) where more than 40% of the land is cultivated, the North particularly in Koura and Akkar, Marjaayoun and Nabatiyeh in the South as well as the coastal region where intensive agriculture is also present in greenhouses, and Mount Lebanon. The Agriculture sector generates around 4.7% of Lebanon's GDP mainly in the production of dairy products, food preserves and subsistence farming (FAO, 2018). The critical agricultural products include vegetables that rank first with 48% of total agricultural production and fruit comes second with 26% and 12% for dairy, livestock products, and wheat; and 7% for olive, eggs, and almonds (IDAL, 2015).
According to IDAL ( Based on the aforementioned facts, there is a major potential for improvement. However, since 2011, the Syrian crisis has resulted in massive influxes of refugees across the region primarily into neighboring Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, where Lebanon hosts around 1.7 million refugees, to be the country that has the highest concentration of refugees in the world (FAO, 2018). This large and unexpected number of Syrian refugees increased labor supply by a range of 30 to 50 percent (with the largest impacts on women, youth and unskilled workers). Moreover, refugees drove down agricultural wages substantially and put Lebanon under political and economic challenges, where the Lebanese citizen is competing with refugees for jobs, access to public services, infrastructure, and natural resources (FAO, 2018). Moreover, the Syrian crisis lead to an increase in the cost of shipping Lebanese agricultural products by land to Arab markets, which steer the Lebanese food exports to lose their competitiveness in the Gulf market in front the neighboring countries (LAU, 2015).
Furthermore, the Southern area of Lebanon has suffered from the crisis where according to Antoine Howayek, the president of the Lebanese Farmers' Association; the 90% of the banana crop exported to Syrian market has fallen to 50% due to the crisis (LAU, 2015). At the same time Ramiz Osseiran, head of the Farmers' Association in the South of Lebanon said, -Syrians' consumption of Lebanese produce dropped by around 70% due to the population's lower purchasing power in the war-ravaged country, and due to the fact that a huge number of Syrians have left their country‖ (ibid, Para 5). Syrian women work as agricultural workers and are being recruited in teams to secure income and shelter; these women have increased their agricultural expertise especially those who come from similar agricultural areas in Syria. This fact has affected the local population's livelihood, the employment rate and specifically the poverty incidence which has risen to 42% in South Lebanon compared with the national poverty rate of 28% per cent which is 21% (ILO, 2014).

Methodology
Over the past ten years, according to the Institute for Women's Policy and Research, the gender wage gap has seen little change; between 2016 and 2017, the gap for full-time workers with weekly salaries grew wider by 0.1 percentage points (Calfas, 2018). For as long as women have been in the workplace, women have faced threats about whether they are really up to the job like men do, and the more women break into male-dominated fields, such as agricultural areas, the more they discover such inequality (Waxman, 2019).
This research is a quantitative descriptive research that collects primary data from a conveniently selected sample of agricultural employees, who were willing to participate, using a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire aims to assess the existence of the wage gap within agricultural firms in South Lebanon. Also, the research intends to study female employees who are affected by the sticky floor and to show the necessity of equitable rules against discrimination in the work place.

Sample Selection
The present study is based on an adequate sample of employees selected from five private Lebanese agricultural organizations located in South Lebanon. The size of the sample is 385 persons, where its size was determined based on Cochran's rule (Hejase & Hejase, 2013b) with 95% confidence level, an estimated proportion of 50% due to lack of pilot studies, and 5% error to tolerate. Participants were selected conveniently provided they were willing to participate. Moreover, participants were clearly informed about the research objectives, and were transparently assured confidentiality of their responses, therefore all participants were willing to offer their responses and had no objections whatsoever or concerns either physically or emotionally while participating in this endeavor. The researchers collected the data personally from most of the employees due to the low educated respondents who cannot fill the survey forms, consequently, it can be said that a 100% response rate was achieved. Moreover, the questionnaire was translated into the Arabic language [from English to Arabic first, then from Arabic to English for the sake of minimization of errors] to avoid respondents' misunderstanding. Finally, Data analysis was performed using the Statistical Product and Service Solutions, SPSS version 24, an IBM software product (Hejase & Hejase, 2013b). Descriptive statistics and cross-tabulations were used to interpret the collected primary data.

The Survey Design
The survey design used in this research is composed of 19 structured questions and one open question.
It is formed of three main sections. Part one includes five questions (1 to 5) designed to assess the respondent's type of work and hourly/monthly salary to determine the difference in pay between the two genders, and to know the influence of the type of work. Part two, includes ten questions ( questionnaire as their tool to discuss the wage gap issue (Alvarezy, 2015). Also, similar surveys were conducted online within Canada, Switzerland, Germany, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States to reveal results related to the wage gap case (Poll, 2015).
Thus, the primary aims of the research are:  To know the hourly wage for both genders.
 To assess if gender affects salary.
 To assess if experience affects hourly wage.
 To explore if women are aware of the wage gap issue and if they consider it a discrimination act.
 To know if family responsibilities are one of the major causes of the gender wage gap.
 To identify if physical ability is the leading cause of gender wage differences.
 To discover the wage gap causes within the agricultural sector in South Lebanon. were married and carrying family responsibilities, while 33.8% were single. Also, 54.3% of the workers earned an hourly wage below 3,000 L.L. and 45.7% earned between 3,000-9,000 L.L.

Demographics
Due to the sensitivity of the wage question and inability of the respondents to provide an answer related to their hourly wage, another question was raised about the range of the monthly salary under three categories: 200,000 LL to 500,000 LL, 501,000 to 800,000 and 801,000 to 1000,000 LL where the frequencies were 199 (51.7%), 166 (43.1%) and 20 (5.2%), respectively. Now because the frequency of the third category was low (which will violate the assumptions needed later for the χ 2 test of independence), this class was combined with the second class leading to new wage distribution namely 51.7% (200,000 to 500,000 LL) and 48.3% (501,000-1,000,000 LL).

Workers' Gender
The first question that the current research answers is related to the hourly wage of South Lebanon agricultural workers in regards to the gender. Table 2 shows that 34.81% of male workers earn more than 3,000 up to 9,000 L.L. while 43.6% of female workers earn 3,000 L.L. or lower.
A Chi-Square test of independence was performed to examine the relation between gender and the hourly wage. The relation between these variables was statistically significant, χ 2 (1, n=385)=123.09, p=0.000. Thus, there is enough evidence to suggest an association between gender and hourly wage as depicted in the table whereby males are more likely to get a higher hourly wage than females indicating that a significant gender wage gap subsists in South Lebanon within the agriculture sector.  been reported in Sri Lanka that the male-female wage differentials persist in the agriculture sectors (Gunatilaka & Hewarathna, 2002).

Workers' Experience
A Chi-Square test of independence was calculated comparing the frequencies of the wage categories and years of experience. When considering both genders, a significant dependency was found with χ 2 (3, n=385)=117.93 and p=0.000. Actually, higher years of experience are associated with higher wages.

Workers' Age
A Chi-Square test of independence was applied to compare the frequencies of the wage categories to age categories for the total respondents. A significant dependency was found where χ 2 (4, n=385)=80.517 and p=0.000. One might ask here: is a higher age category associated with higher hourly wage? To answer this question, the Chi-Square test was applied only for females where it was found that χ 2 (4, n=210)=24.976 and p=0.000 implying that age and wage are significantly dependent where  (2001) indicated that in general for all career ages, men earn at least 10% more than women of the same career age. Interestingly, Elkins (2017) confirms the above results as shown in Figure 1 depicting the difference of pay growth versus age in favor of males.

Workers' Nationality
Data from Table 5 which depicts the distribution of the hourly wage versus nationality reveals that 54.3% of the workers were Syrians while 45.2% were Lebanese and 0.5% were others. The expected contingency table platform shows more than 20% of the cells have an expected count less than 5 implying that the Chi-Squares will not have a Chi-Square distribution and therefore is not valid. The usual, classical solution in such cases is to combine categories before doing the Chi-Square test. Thus,

Family Responsibility (Marital Status)
In studying if the marital status (family responsibility) of the worker affects the worker's wage,   (2000) and Hamdar et al. (2015) assert that in the work field, there's some work called -women's work‖ and other work known as -men's work‖ a fact that leads to wage gaps. Therefore, the current study assessed the dimension of the worker's physical ability to perform hard or easy activities and how this influences the wage category. A Chi-Square test of independency was calculated to identify dependency between wage and physical ability. For the totality of respondents the data given in Table 7 indicated a significant dependency where χ 2 (1, n=385)=105.388 and p=0.000. As for the females alone, the test gave χ 2 (1, n=210)=1.414 and p=0.234 which means that there is a significant independency between wage and type of work when it comes to females; in other words females are underpaid irrespective of the hardness of work they perform. On the other hand, for males, the Chi-Square test gave χ 2 (1, n=175)=1.280 and p=0.258 indicating a significant independency with males getting higher wages when they perform hard tasks. So, physical ability is one of the causes which stand behind the wage gap within the agricultural sector in South Lebanon. Indeed, within the agricultural sector, ability to perform hard work is associated with higher productivity and thus higher wages. Similar findings were reported by Thapa (2008) who stated in his study performed in Nepal that male labor is more productive in agriculture than female labor. Furthermore, Lips (2009; cited in Hejase et al., 2013c) asserted that certain jobs require masculine qualities which eventually keep women out from entering those domains.

Workers' Awareness of the Gender Wage Gap
Workers' awareness of the existence of a gender gap is tested with the dependency Chi-Square test to relate the levels of gender wage gap awareness with gender. Significant dependency is identified between gender and awareness of pay gap where χ 2 (2, n=385)=40.797 and p=0.000, indicating that the majority of males are in fact aware of the existence of the gender wage gap in comparison to females.  Moreover, Table 8 shows that 59.74% (230 out of 385) of the workers answered that there is a wage gap, 13.25% (51 out of 385) answered with -No‖, and 27.01% (104 out of 385) responded -I do not know‖. Therefore, it looks that more than the half of the workers (~ 60% are aware of the wage gap).

Workers' Efficiency
Applying the Chi-Square test to Table 9 aiming at identifying if there is a relation between gender and the issue of -Money earned affects the way I do my work‖; the outcomes indicated that there is a significant dependence with a value of χ 2 (2, n=385)=19.599 and p=0.000. This result implies that workers believe that gender and the belief that money earned affects efficiency at work are related specifically among males who in their majority (86.8%) agree that money earned affects their performance. is money what matters so that farmers will feel more motivated to improve production.

Workers' Awareness That Wage Gap Is a Direct Discrimination
On asking if the difference in pay between men and women is a direct discrimination, 40.3% (155/385) of the respondents answered yes, 33.8% (130/385) answered no and around 26% (100/385) expressed that they actually don't know (Table 10). To verify if gender has to do with these percentages, a Chi-Square test was performed and the result was χ 2 (2, n=385)=7.141, p=0.028 which implies a www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/jbtp Journal of Business Theory and Practice Vol. 8, No. 4, 2020 47 Published by SCHOLINK INC. significant relationship where surprisingly men were the majority who attested to this discrimination.

Workers' Awareness That a Sticky Floor Does Exist
This study examined the existence of a sticky floor for women in the agricultural sector in South Lebanon. Results show upon asking the respondents if men get promoted faster than women that 56.6% (218 out of 385) in favor, 13.2% (51/385) against and 30.2% (116/385) answered that they don't know.
Again the Chi-Square test of independence revealed that χ 2 (2, n=385)=52.243, p=0.000 which implies a significant relationship exists with 76.6% of men assured the fact as compared to 40.0% of women who did the same. Likewise, 6.3% of men answered no compared to 19.0% of women. Thus, the sticky floor prevails among women within the agriculture sector in South of Lebanon. This result agrees with Khanna (2012) in India who argued that the sticky floor effect persists even after controlling personal and job attributes; thus, implying heavy discrimination of the poor women.

Workers' Beliefs about Experience, Gender, and Earnings
Three questions related to experience in relation to salary, gender in relation to wage and earnings within the agricultural sector were asked.

Estimation of the Wage Gap
The gender pay gap is the average difference in earnings between men and women (Watkins, 2018). In order to identify this gap, a very critical and sensitive question related to the monthly salary was included in the questionnaire. Such a delicate question, if allowed by law leads many people to refuse or at least to prefer not to answer it. In the USA, such a question is irritable and is becoming illegal if asked at hiring time, simply because salary history inquiries fortify discrimination by influencing the hiring and income decisions. -What's your current salary?‖ is now an illegal question in at least 17 states within the USA where the salary history is banned aiming at closing the gender wage gap (Salary.com, 2020). In fact, -women and people of color deserve to be paid what they're worth, not held back by their current or previous salary‖ (Ward, 2017). Thus, because of the controversial nature of the question, respondents were asked to indicate their monthly salaries within some pre-determined salary ranges. Table 11 shows the data gathered where each of the columns labelled -average‖ provides the average salary being the midpoint of the specific salary interval. Additionally, the nonparametric Independent-Samples Mann-Whitney U Test was performed since there is an interest in this work to assess whether or not it is reasonable to claim that the two population salary distributions (the population salary distributions for females and males) are equal, based on the information provided by the samples. The test showed that the distributions in the two groups differed significantly (Mann-Whitney U=7880.5, n females =210, n males =175, p<0.000) and, consequently, it can be concluded that our sample data provides strong evidence that the distribution of male salaries is higher than the distribution of female salaries indicating the aforementioned significant gender wage gap of around 31%. Indeed, this figure is in full accordance with the 31.5% wage gap reported by the ESCWA (2009) and almost similar to the 28% reported by the SOFA team and Doss (Raney et al. & Doss, 2011, p. 22).

Conclusions
This research aims to assess the wage gap within the agricultural sector in South Lebanon and to search for the causes behind wage gap (experience, age, nationality, educational level). In addition to investigating whether it is considered as an act of discrimination toward women, or whether the wage gap is due to physical ability that men have an advantage in. The research also detects the existence of a sticky floor facing women in agricultural jobs and if women are aware of the gap. Moreover, the study investigates whether the wage gap had any negative effect on women's performance.
The results showed a difference in pay between men and women, thus establishing that a wage gap does exist in South Lebanon within the agriculture sector. In fact, in using a Canadian website called -New Brunswick‖ (GNB, 2015) to calculate the wage gap of the sample, where the numbers of male and female employees with their average hourly wages were entered, the result came to be 40% which is a significant difference in pay between the two genders working within the agricultural sector in South Lebanon. This figure is in fact higher than that reported by the Economic-Social Commission for Western Asia study which concluded that the wage gap in Lebanon was 31.5% in 2009 (ESCWA, 2009).
The outcomes of this study showed that the wage gap in agricultural sector is affected by many factors such as experience (working hours), age and family responsibilities. Also, physical ability which is a vital factor affecting the wage difference, while the nationality and the educational level had no effect on wage gap. Focusing on the physical ability, it is considered as a main cause behind wage gap in the agriculture sector according to the workers' opinions where women cannot complete many tasks which after given thought are considered hard tasks (Thapa, 2008;Hejase et al., 2013c). In addition, it was concluded that the wage gap does affect the women's performance negatively, where the money was the most critical factor affecting women's effectiveness at work. Actually, Cloninger, Ramamoorthy and Flood (2011) assert if women are rewarded fairly for their work, they are more likely to show higher level of commitment that can lead to better job performance.
Moreover, the wage gap is a decriminalizing act women suffer from daily but unfortunately, women are unaware of this discrimination. Schieder and Gould (2016) contend that overt gender discrimination (wage gap) is typically adjusted statistically for certain characteristics, however -can radically understate the potential for gender discrimination to suppress women's earnings. This is because gender discrimination does not occur only in employers' pay-setting practices. It can happen at every stage leading to women's labor market outcomes‖ (Para 5).
Finally, women face a sticky floor in their careers which leads men to get promoted faster and have faster access to higher positions. The aforementioned is confirmed by Yap andKonrad (2009), Hejase et al. (2014) and Yousaf and Schmiede (2017).
Conclusively, though these findings reflected the reality of wage gap within the agricultural sector in South Lebanon they are considered as an alert for workers in general and women in specific to know their rights and seek for equality, as well as an alert for organizational administrations and policymakers. So, wage gap does exist, as proved by the present study, and the results may influence the policy makers and administrations to be more aware, take actions through new career plans, develop labor policies and set a precise regulation of work discrimination.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the workers themselves presented the excuse of -physical ability‖ for the existence of a wage gap within the agricultural sector. Physical ability is one of the leading causes behind the wage gap within the agricultural sector in South Lebanon. In the open question presented to the respondents at the end of the survey questionnaire, respondents were asked about their www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/jbtp Journal of Business Theory and Practice Vol. 8, No. 4, 2020 50 Published by SCHOLINK INC.
opinions on the wage gap. Most of the answers ended up vindicating the wage gap and neglecting discrimination by giving men the right to earn more than women due to their physical strength. Some of the workers said: -Men work more and do work that women cannot do‖. Others said: -Men can do more productive work and have more responsibilities that women cannot afford‖. So, in their opinion, a man deserves more money since he does more work. However, to be more accurate, -Is physical ability the real excuse for wage gap within the agricultural sector?‖. The aforementioned leads to carry out future research taking into consideration cultural values. This research acts as an eye opener for other researchers locally and internationally to consider covert variables in their quest to mitigate wage gaps and discrimination against female workforce as addressed by Schieder and Gould (2016) and Meara, Pastore and Webster (2020).

Implications
The outcomes of this study are important for NGOs, academicians and researchers, policy makers and rural authorities to plan innovatively and capitalize on the untapped female workforce in the agricultural sector of the country. The following recommendations may serve as a platform to the betterment of the functions of the workforce and the mitigation of the observed wage gap.

NGOs
There is a major cultural bias whereby males are preferred to females because of their physical capabilities in the agricultural endeavors. Here, NGOs are called in to offer awareness campaigns directed towards spreading the reality that an integrated workforce in the rural areas leads to better productivity and division of tasks according to the nature of the land, resources, technological equipment and transportation of produce. Furthermore, training of females farmers on how to manage resources is helpful.

Academicians and Researchers
The current paper shed light on the continuous problem of discrimination and wage gap leading to negative consequences in productivity and motivation to engage further the female workforce.
Academicians and researchers are called to emphasize the importance of the highly ignored workforce of the future, the full potential of females, in their university lectures and research endeavors directed to increase awareness of the student population and direct their efforts to study the actual agricultural difficulties and problems by involving students in their last year graduation projects and internships to offer solutions and support within a social responsibility framework which is beneficial to all.

Policy Makers
The Ministry of Agriculture holds the responsibility to plan and execute a series of workshops to the agricultural workforce involving both males and females in order to enforce a culture of anti-discrimination and expose the benefits to the rural farmers as well as the economy of the country.
A fair pay scheme may be developed with the help of academic experts, agricultural professionals and government representatives.

Rural Authorities/Municipalities
Municipalities represent a direct front with the farmers, covering all of Lebanon and not only the southern part. Their execution of government planned alleviation efforts is fundamental and the municipal rural authorities will act as a real liaison with the above mentioned parties to foresee effective and efficient communication and cooperation of awareness campaigns, technical workshops, financial support and supervision of the progress.