So the women of Italy are standing up to be counted – more than a million of them marched at the weekend to protest  prime minister Berlusconi’s womanising – and now a judge has ruled he is to stand trial on a charge of using an underage prostitute. The opposition has called him to resign, while his own supporters claim he is the victim of a witch hunt orchestrated by leftist magistrates.

But the real issue here is the level of 'boys just being boys' that has been tolerated in Italy for years. Stories of philandering politicians are ten a penny, almost expected, in a society where the line between healthy appreciation of the charms of the 'fair sex'  and downright harassment is wavy to say the least.  Walking down the streets of Rome with my sister when we were in our  twenties,  just a few years back (!),  I remember being flattered at first by the routine whistles and cat calls, and then becoming irritated, and finally being on the verge of  thumping the next idiot who leered after us.

This is a country where fifteen years ago, long before there was the level of nudity or explicitness on prime time television that is considered acceptable now, there was an Italian game show where the hostesses routinely took off their tops as part of the game.  I don’t remember the women of Italy marching about that one. 

There is a tolerance in Italian society that is not found in other democracies, a belief that scandals involving politicians and young women are to be expected and almost normal - the opposition parties in Italy currently sounding off about Berlusconi have had their own scandals too. 

But the sordidness of what is emerging about the Bunga Bunga parties in the prime minister’s villa in Milan seems to have shocked Italian society out of this placidity, and got the women marching.  It is a wonderful irony that the three judges who will try Berlusconi in April, randomly selected, happen to be women.  Hopefully they will throw the book at him.