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After several decades of strong identification of socialism with state property, the guidelines of the agrarian policy during the last years in Cuba, more favorable to the autonomy of non-state productive forms, motivated the realization of this article, focused on the strengthening of the socio-political approach of sustainability, particularly in the cooperative sector. This reality, together with the scientific consensus that the debate on the political issues involved has been unsystematic, led this paper to aim at assessing potential conditioning factors for the sustainability of the agrarian sector associated with socio-political transformations in the Cuban cooperative sphere. Theoretical and historical analysis methods were used, as well as sociological analysis of guiding documents for agrarian policy. The main result presented an ongoing diversification of the political culture, carrying unfavorable social representations of the regulatory or administrative role of state instances, the revitalization of practices not related to traditional conceptions of socialism and other sources of ideological contradictions, which reveal risks for the sustainability of agrarian policy interests, related to the preservation, even, of the socialist character of the constitutionally endorsed sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their characteristics, cooperatives have a great potential for women and men to participate on equal terms, although gender imbalances still exist. In order to explore this issue, this paper reviews the evolution of the cooperative movement with respect to gender equality, paying attention to the forces in the environment that have strengthened this position. It also analyses the elements that act in environments as disparate as those of Cuba and Spain and that favor the participation of women in cooperatives. Reference is made to Non-agricultural Cooperatives in Cuba and Associated Work Cooperatives in Spain, which are similar organizations. Using a qualitative methodology, theoretical methods of a socio-legal nature were used, which made it possible to focus on the evolution of cooperativism as part of a historical process and to compare the cases of both countries. The corpus has been made up of the main international declarations on gender and the Social Economy, as well as laws, regional and national public policies that promote gender equality in cooperatives. The results indicate that, with the particularities of each country, the evolution of the international context has exerted pressure for action in this area. However, the changes introduced by cooperatives require that the experience for women be successful, in terms of promoting real long-term empowerment and being a viable economic alternative that transcends the times of crisis that have encouraged them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]