It doesn’t take a man to make a successful woman, Candace Bushnell, author of “Sex and the City,” told a crowd of mostly female students at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall on Monday night.

In her speech, titled “Sex and the City: An Honest Look at Love and Relationships,” Bushnell talked about how her life as a single, career-driven woman in New York served as the basis for her best-selling book and the hit TV show, “Sex and the City.”

“We expect too much from our relationships with men,” Bushnell said. “I vowed that somehow in my life I’d make it OK for single women to go out in groups — marauding groups.”

Bushnell related various life experiences and anecdotes, all of which culminated in her career as a bold and opinionated journalist and novelist.

As a child, she used to “observe” her neighbors “Harriet-the-Spy style,” and as a teenager she offered her friends relationship advice, despite having little experience herself and being convinced that “all guys were scum.”

Bushnell said she was first faced with the concept of the independent career woman when she moved to New York in the 1980s.

“The ’80s was the first time in history when women were going to college to get degrees and have careers. I was part of a huge influx of women going to the city to seek their fame and fortune,” Bushnell said. “We were basically living those ‘Sex and the City’ lives, even though no one had defined it as that yet.”

However there still was a perception that women needed to get married and have babies, she said.

“We as women didn’t really know what to do. We didn’t have anybody to look back to,” Bushnell said. “All we knew was that we didn’t want to live the lives our mothers had.”

In addition to telling stories about her and her girlfriends’ wild escapades in the city — she once interviewed a Calvin Klein model in bed — Bushnell also read an excerpt from her new book, “Trading Up,” answered questions about her love life and offered her advice on relationships.

“Our boyfriends are going to come and go — and mostly go,” Bushnell said. “So us girlfriends have to stick together.”

When she asked the predominantly female crowd whether today’s men have “gotten better,” she was met with an enthusiastic chorus of “no!”

Many of those in attendance said they were fans of the TV show “Sex and the City.”

Bushnell said both the book and the show are loosely based on her girlfriends’ lives and her own but that the stories and characters are embellished. But Bushnell more than resembled Carrie Bradshaw, the main character of the popular TV show, according to several audience members.

“She was totally Carrie,” said Abby Wike, a senior at Boston University.

Medill freshman Greg Marshall said he agreed.

“I think that she presents herself as vexing and adorable and whimsical as Carrie from the show (does),” he said. “I was actually surprised at the resemblance.”

But Marshall also noted that Bushnell does not represent the typical 40-year-old woman and, because she is married, does not completely reflect the single-woman mentality she put forth.

“Candace Bushnell lives a really charmed life,” Marshall said. “She doesn’t seem as powerful as she implies. I think she’s kind of caught up in the whole marriage conundrum.”

Medill freshman Laura Moore, however, said she was impressed with Bushnell’s humor and wit.

“She really met my expectations,” Moore said. “And she looks exactly like Carrie Bradshaw.”