Magdalena Galdikienė

Magdalena Galdikienė née Draugelytė (26 September 1891 – 22 May 1979) was a Lithuanian Catholic feminist, teacher, and politician.

After World War II, Galdikienė fled to the United States where she devoted herself to supporting, promoting, and preserving the art of her husband, the painter Adomas Galdikas.

Magdalena Galdikienė was born on 26 September 1891 in the village of Bardauskai [lt] located near Keturvalakiai in then Congress Poland, a client state of the Russian Empire, and now in Lithuania.

[2] At the outbreak of World War I, she was attending courses held by Paul Natorp at the University of Marburg, but managed to return to Saint Petersburg.

She worked as a teacher at a gymnasium and a seminary of the Saulė Society and became active in Lithuanian cultural and political life.

[1] In the parliament, she advocated equal rights for men and women and succeeded in passing amendments to the Civil Code and other laws equalizing inheritance and children's custody rights and establishing separate passports for women who were not dependent on their husband's or father's papers.

[1] She also lobbied to establish women's sections in other newspapers and journals and contributed articles to many other publications, including Ūkininkas, Laisvė, and Lietuvaitė.

[8] As Soviet troops advanced on Lithuania in summer 1944, Galdikienė, who was ill at the time, and her husband fled with very few belongings to Bonn and Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany.

She completed evening courses and got a job at a bank to financially provide for her husband who devoted his time to painting.

[10][11] She spent the last years of her life in a nursing home of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Putnam, Connecticut.

Galdikienė (right) and Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė (center) with other women delegates of the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania