More than 15,000 Italian women, including academics and scientists, have endorsed a petition attacking the “sexist policies, behaviours and discourse” of Silvio Berlusconi, a Milan academic has said.

Professor Chiara Volpato, from the University of Milan-Bicocca, said that thousands of women responded to an internet appeal made in June after Italian academics urged the wives of world leaders to boycott the G8 summit to protest against the alleged antics of the Italian Prime Minister, who is embroiled in scandal over his private life.

The wives of the leaders, including Sarah Brown, ignored the appeal and joined their husbands at the summit in L’Aquila. Mr Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario, was noticeably absent, having announced that she planned to divorce her husband after he was pictured with Noemi Letizia, a lingerie model from Naples, at her 18th birthday party in April.

News of the women’s petition came as several opposition MPs renewed their demand for Mr Berlusconi to appear before the Italian parliament to respond to allegations about his “encounters with young women”.

Professor Volpato said that the release last week of audio tapes and transcriptions that allegedly included intimate conversations recorded while the Prime Minister was having sex with a prostitute, Patrizia D’Addario, had infuriated Italian women.

“Fifteen thousand women are convinced that the time has come to speak up,” Professor Volpato said. “Mr Berlusconi’s behaviour, and that of many other politicians of his coalition, has greatly damaged the image of Italy internationally, strengthening the stereotype that Italians endorse old-fashioned macho attitudes. What is worse is that young women and girls are consistently taught the idea that their bodies rather than their abilities and their knowledge will be the key to success in this society.”

Professor Volpato, a lecturer in social psychology, said that the petitioners, who also include writers, librarians and journalists, rejected the “objectification” of women, often reinforced by many entertainment programmes aired on Mr Berlusconi’s television network.

“The personal behaviour of Mr Berlusconi is in line with the way women are portrayed in the mass media that he controls, typically lightly dressed and silent beauties, whose only purpose is to serve as decoration, while older, fully dressed men are running the show.

She said that the academics would meet next month to consider a public awareness campaign. “We have to take the initiative but we are not sure what form that will take,” she said. “We may consider demonstrations because we are not being given any space in the media to voice our point of view. We are being shunned.”

A group of MPs from the centre-left opposition Democratic Party presented a petition to parliament demanding that the Prime Minister respond to allegations that he offered “professional advancement”, including parliamentary seats, in exchange for sexual favours.

“The women of Mr Berlusconi’s Italy should not be resigned to the idea that the only way to advance professionally is through Big Brother or by going out with a powerful man,” Livia Turco, a former minister and an MP from Abruzzo, said.

Marco Lillo, an investigative journalist and co-author of a new book called Papi: A Political Scandal, said that most Italians derived their opinions from television, rather than newspapers.

“The problem is that Italian television does not inform people,” he said. “Italians vote for Mr Berlusconi not because they know him and actually like what they know about him. They vote for him because they don’t know enough about him.”

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