The 2008 Olympic silver medallist who is making the case for a female Tour de France has no faith in the men hoping to be president of the UCI

For a woman who has scaled back her involvement in international cycling this year, Emma Pooley has been pretty active in recent weeks. Since launching a petition during the Tour de France to call for parity for women in the event, along with the world and Olympic champion Marianne Vos, the world triathlon champion, Chrissie Wellington, and the American athlete and writer Kathryn Bertine, the 2008 Olympic silver medallist has found herself at the forefront of the campaign to give women cyclists the calendar, the media coverage and the money they merit.

The petition, for a women's Tour de France to be run simultaneously with the men's race – as it was briefly in the 1980s – has garnered more than 80,000 signatures and pushed the issue centre stage, drawing support from many quarters, most notably from Harriet Harman: the Labour deputy leader produced an open letter to the Tour organisers asking that they consider the idea alongside next year's Grand Départ in Yorkshire.

The case put by Vos, Pooley, Wellington and Bertine for women to ride the same stages in the Tour as the men was straightforward – the roads are already closed, the spectators are there and would get to see two races for the price of one instead of spending hours watching a largely empty road.

The current rules put the Tour well over the maximum distance for women but the case there was compelling: "In the late 1960s people assumed that women couldn't run the marathon," read the petition. "Thirty years on we can look back and see how erroneous this was. Hopefully 30 years from now, we will see 2014 as the year that opened people's eyes to true equality in the sport of cycling."

Over the years there has been a convergence between the distances men and women race, as men's professional races are becoming progressively shorter, and women's gradually longer.

"I am surprised it took off so well," says Pooley of the petition. "The media interest has surprised me but we launched it at the right moment, during the Tour." The 31-year-old has raised the issue before, most notably in these pages before last year's Olympics, while the London silver medallist Lizzie Armitstead was damning about the UCI hierarchy immediately after taking her medal. However, Pooley has always seemed unwilling to push her head over the parapet for fear of being dismissed. "I'm perceived by the cycling hierarchy as a whingeing woman but I'm not the only one who has noticed."

The issue may not be new but its recent profile suggests that a tipping point has been reached. "The Olympics showed that women's sport is good entertainment," she says, "but elite sport and hosting the Olympics was supposed to help the public get into sport but 80% of British women don't do enough sport to be healthy. Plenty of women watch sport, plenty of men want to watch women's sport and not just because they want to leer at women in bikinis. It frustrates me when they say people don't want to watch it on television because it's not on television for them to watch in the first place."

"It was a daring leap," she says of the petition. "People say that [the Tour organisers] ASO are probably upset but if I thought that [the Tour organiser] Christian Prudhomme would answer the phone I'd call him. The point about the petition is that it showed people want a women's Tour de France. It would bring something to the race, the spectators are there, the media are there. Apparently there are logistical challenges but what we were trying to do was show ASO the commercial potential for them."

Messages from the Tour organisers have been mixed. There were hints that a meeting might take place, but Prudhomme has dismissed the idea on the grounds that the Tour is big enough as it is. But the Tour's gigantisme was a concern a quarter of a century ago and nothing has been done to check it, so it seems a shallow excuse at best. "We had contact via a third party about a meeting," says Pooley. "I'm hopeful but sceptical."

Pooley is more positive about the campaign by the organisers of the Tour of Britain to put on a women's Tour that will push health and fitness and will be, the organisers hope, equal in terms of prize money and backup for the competitors. "I would like to see it on the same roads as the men's race but I understand about the road closure situation. I know Guy Elliott [of Sweetspot, the Tour of Britain organisers] is really passionate about women's cycling and I'm sure it will be a huge success."

Pooley is damning about the candidates for the presidency of the UCI, the incumbent, Pat MacQuaid, and the challenger, Brian Cookson, who have espoused the cause of women's cycling only recently after many years involvement at the highest level. "They are doing it to save face because they don't want to be seen as old-fashioned bigots," said Pooley.

"They've been on the UCI commissions for many years in which women's cycling has gone downhill. There are people at the UCI who are really pro-women's cycling but fine words butter no parsnips. What they are saying sounds great but it's all talk. I haven't heard a specific suggestion from either of them."

With good reason she seems sceptical about the government conjuring £10m to help fund the Tour de France's visit to Yorkshire, and equally so about this weekend's RideLondon event, in which Peter Sagan and David Millar, among others, will race through Surrey. The point about the disparity in what is held up as an Olympic legacy event is simply made by Pooley: "They will close the roads for RideLondon [on Sunday] but the women will get a criterium on Saturday evening."