what specific actions would justify corporal punishment of women by their husbands?
None, really.
The law typically allows unilateral punishment against adults only as far as the exercise of your normal rights extends. If you are an employer, you may be able to punish your employees to some extent. If you are a spouse, you may change the nature of your relationship, up to and including filing for divorce. If you have some property that others use, you may change the terms of their use to achieve some sort of punishment.
And in some limited circumstances, you may act to prevent an actual wrong that is presently occurring, i.e. you may intervene to halt an act of violence, as specified by the local laws. This is not so much an act of punishment anyway.
But if you want to go beyond these few cases, and inflict a punishment against another person because you feel they deserve it, you must resort to a court of law, which exercises the exclusive right of criminal punishment. And since corporal punishment isn't typically used by the courts in this country, no such outcome is likely.