In a huge boost for women's rights in the male-dominated culture of Italy, a woman is set to head the country's employers' association for the first time.

Emma Marcegaglia, 42, who once dreamt of being a ballet dancer but is now known as the “Steel Lady”, emerged yesterday as the overwhelming favourite to head Confindustria, the Italian equivalent of the CBI.

A group of three “wise men” appointed to sound out opinion among industrialists announced that she had the backing of an unprecedented 95 per cent of Confindustria delegates, who will vote for a new leader next month.

Ms Marcegaglia, who is thus poised to become Italy's most powerful woman, will succeed Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, 60, the boss of Fiat and Ferrari, who steps down as head of Confindustria in May after four years. Mr Montezemolo has lobbied behind the scenes for Ms Marcegaglia to succeed him, arguing that Italy can reverse its decline if it encourages two of its “underused human resources”: women and the young.

Ms Marcegaglia, who runs a steel manufacturing business at Mantua founded by her father, Steno, with 6,500 employees making products from steel tubes to radiator grilles, graduated in business studies in Milan and New York. Supporters say that she has the energy and drive to help to halt Italy's inexorable slide to stagnation and recession and to stimulate growth and investment.

Confindustria plays a key role in the Italian economy, which is still controlled by an old-fashioned trinity of government, employers and trade unions. Ms Marcegaglia is a former head of Confindustria's young entrepreneurs' organisation, where she was given the nickname “Black & Decker” for her “tenacity and determination”.

Her rise has aroused hopes among women's groups that Italy's macho culture is being eroded in a country where the governing elite is predominantly male and elderly and the prevailing image of women is provided by semi-naked dancers and showgirls on television variety shows.

Emma Bonino, a former EU commissioner and a minister in the outgoing centre-left Government of Romano Prodi, said that only 11 per cent of deputies in the Lower House of Parliament were women and the number of women in the Senate was 8 per cent. It was “even more shameful” that only 2 per cent of boardroom posts in Italy were held by women, a figure lower than Spain's 4 per cent.

Ms Marcegaglia, a devout Roman Catholic, has a five-year-old daughter, and her husband, Roberto Vancini, is a computer engineer. Friends say that she is a strict manager but a conscientious and loving mother who is a good listener and chooses her words care-fully.

She haunts flea markets to indulge her passion for antique watches and has a weakness for chocolate but does not “waste her money on luxuries”. She reserves weekends for her family and supports a charity for the donation of umbilical cords for stem-cell research.

Confindustria sources said that Federica Guidi, 38, managing director of the Ducati energy company, was in “pole position” to become head of the young entrepreneurs' organisation, which would put two women at the top of the Italian industrialists' power structure.

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