A World Bank report on gender equality in business has found a sorry state for women in many countries, with several nations upholding laws that give husbands the power to prevent their wives from working.

Wives must ask their husband's permission to work in 15 different countries including Iran, Syria, Bolivia and Mauritania, according to the report titled 'Women, Business and the Law 2014', prepared by the World Bank. Various laws allow men to object to and prevent their wives from taking and attending jobs.

Seventy-nine countries have laws restricting the kind of work women are allowed to do.

“Many societies have made progress, gradually moving to dismantle ingrained forms of discrimination against women. Yet a great deal remains to be done,” said World Bank president Jim Yong Kim in the preface to the report released this week.

“The most extensive restrictions on women's employment are in Eastern Europe and Central Asia,” the report said.

Laws vary between countries, but each almost equally repressive. In the Republic of Guinea a wife can reportedly challenge her husband’s decision in court, but still must prove he was “unjustified”.

Not all the 15 nations with the archaic legal view on womens' role in society actually enforce the unenlightened laws. The report says many are simply the “vestiges of history [which] remain codified in certain economies simply because legislation such as the Code Napoleon was adopted wholesale and not regularly reviewed or updated.”

“The notion of head of household, for example, was removed from France's Civil Code in 1970 but persists in many civil codes throughout West Africa.”

In Russia, women cannot drive farm trucks, conduct freight trains, practice woodworking or any of 453 other jobs. The gendered separation of labour duties remains from the regime of the Soviet Union and has not been changed.

Not all are the remnants of an oppressive history, but a sign of a cruel modern reality. At least 29 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Honduras and Senegal, have laws that systematically establish men as patriarchs, giving power over crucial decisions such as where to live, obtaining important documents like passports, or opening bank accounts.

It is a shifting situation but not always for the better. The Ivory Coast ruled this year that women are allowed to work without their husband’s permission, however in Egypt the political rise of Islamic forces has led to the removal of constitutional guarantees against gender discrimination.

The full report is available here.