For a long time no law formally prohibited women’s suffrage, but between 1834 and 1851 legislatures in each British North American colony enacted laws that excluded women from voting. A suffragist movement took shape in Canada beginning in the 1870s: associations were established, and their various activities added to the many individual initiatives. Women gradually acquired the right to vote in municipal elections during and after the 1870s, in provincial ballots between 1916 and 1951, and in federal elections in 1918. Indigenous women who were status Indians did not acquire this right until the period between 1949 and 1969.