She emigrated to the U.S. where she had a son before separating from the father. She did not return to France until the age of 32, where she raised her son alone. In 1897, when she was 37 years old, she became involved in defending and assisting women and children.
La Femme affranchie After meeting
Marguerite Durand, feminist activist and founder of the newspaper
La Fronde, Petit became involved in
journalism. In April 1904, Petit founded
La Femme affranchie, "an organ of socialist and free-thinking worker feminism". She ran the newspaper until 1913 and then during the 1930s. She relied on the support of a former
communard,
Jean Allemane, deported to
New Caledonia, who worked with her to solve the issue of financing the newspaper, which included subscriptions, street sales, and sales to unions and activists. From 1904 to 1907, the team was reinforced by numerous writers, including the pacifist and feminist
Odette Laguerre and
Nelly Roussel, who came from a bourgeois Catholic family, but who when 20 broke with family values to turn to the feminist struggle. Among the many themes developed,
La Femme affranchie devoted a number of articles to the denunciation of prostitution. In addition to publishing the newspaper, Gabrielle held conferences throughout France on the exploitation of women, notably with the
neomalthusianist Paul Robin. she was accused of having made
antimilitarist remarks during a lecture and of having, in a train, incited soldiers to become disobedient and steal weapons. She remained in prison until February 1, 1908. Having become a "dangerous" person, she was accompanied in all her travels by a police commissioner or a
gendarme. But that did not prevent Petit from continuing to travel around France to give lectures, sometimes three a day. On August 2, 1908, Petit was again arrested while supporting striking silk workers of
Besançon, on the grounds, once again, that she was carrying out antimilitarist
propaganda. The trial took place on August 29. She was sentenced to three months in prison, and released on November 13, 1908. At the beginning of 1913, Petit and Bertrand, sensing the rising threat of war, wrote a special issue of
La Femme affranchie, while the voice of the nationalists became more and more vehement and violent against the pacifists.
Interwar period In 1927, while she lived successively in the Vosges,
Lot, and
Charente departments, she was always flanked by a policeman, and she was registered in the
Carnet B, from August 23, 1913. She resumed her lectures on pacifism and women's right to vote, even if, as a libertarian sympathizer, she considered that this fight had its limits. ==Death==