Single women in Iran will need the permission of their guardians to be able to leave the country if a new bill secures enough votes in parliament.

At the moment, unmarried women and men above the age of 18 can leave the country if they have a passport but, according to the new bill, single women would need official consent from their guardian, usually their father.

Married women in Iran always need their husband's permission to be able to hold a passport both under the current legislation that dates back to the pre-1979 Islamic revolution and under the proposed bill.

Husbands can ban their wives from leaving the country at any time. Divorced women, however, are currently free to hold a passport and leave the country without permission.

"Anyone above the age of 18 can apply for a passport," Hossein Naghavi-Hosseini, the speaker of the parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy told the semi-official Isna news agency. "According to this bill … married women of any age need the written consent of their husband to be able to have a passport and single women above the age of 18 will need the permission of their guardian." Single women whose guardian denies them permission could dispute the decision in a court.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women's rights campaigners have struggled to abolish the need for the husband's consent but the new bill, if passed, would be a major setback.

Shadi Sadr, a prominent women's rights activist and human rights lawyer, told the Guardian: "The mentality behind these controversial laws is that women should have owners, to give power to men to have control over women." The majority of people inside Iran who were barred from leaving the country were either women who did not have the permission of their husbands or tax evaders, she added.

Mohammad Mostafaei, a well-known Iranian lawyer currently living in exile in Norway, called the need for permission "the modern slavery". In an article published on the opposition website Rahesabz he writes: "Only slaves at the time of slavery needed permission to go here or there."

Barring citizens from leaving the country is one of the ways the Islamic republic has punished many of its critics in recent years. In a recent example, the family members of the jailed award-winning lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, including her 12-year-old daughter, were subjected to a travel ban.

• This article was amended on 18 January 2013 because Mohammad Mostafaei is currently living in exile in Norway, not the Netherlands as the original said.