In the spirit of histoire croisée, I analyze these rhetorical strategies to highlight the dynamic role that the LEW played in the history of feminist activism in Romania, and conversely, how the participation of Romanian feminists shaped the discursive strategies and activities of the LEW. Speeches, interviews, press articles, and other published and archival materials linked to the participation of Romanian members in the LEW reveal both shifting vocabularies around common themes, as well as constant discursive elements. The categories they set up rhetorically, and how they chose to render visible and invisible commonalities and differences, became discursive tools for generating a shared understanding of what the LEW represented: in each member country individually as a regional network and as a bloc within larger feminist networks, such as the International Women's Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) and the International Council of Women (ICW). I focus on how participants from member countries depicted what they viewed as points of similarity and contrast among their ethnic communities and countries, represented in terms of ethno-racialized ethnicity and respectively shared geographies (regional identities).

In this article I reflect primarily on the verbal rhetoric and visual symbols used by representatives of these countries in the first two gatherings of the network in Bucharest (1923) and Belgrade (1924). The narrowness of this vision undercut the effectiveness of the work the LEW undertook and the goals it aspired to achieve. Even as they spoke for women in general as a category, many understood each other to be speaking on behalf of specific ethnic and racial groups. Their empathy seems to have extended predominantly to the ethnic majorities represented in the group. As they forged transnational bridges and built friendships across borders, the feminists of the LEW articulated a vision of progress deeply rooted in ethno-nationalism and racialized rhetoric.

The founding of the Little Entente of Women (LEW) in 1923 provided new opportunities for feminists from member and aspiring countries to work together toward common goals for women's rights in those states. The peace treaties after World War I represented a major shift not only in the map of Eastern Europe, but also in feminist political and social activism in the region.

Jurnal de război by Marie of Romania