Candace Bushnell Quotes
The '80s was all about this idea that women could have it all. You could have a career, and you could have a husband, and you could have children.
This question he asked of an interviewee was at the time not even considered offensive of patronizing and women and men who advocated careers for women would try to explain that women could do both. Very few would counter with the point that what about men and their “neglect” of family life or the reality that through the entire Second World War MILLIONS of women were working. This quotation illustrated the culture change in the years since then.
There was a movement to pay married women who were housewives to compensate them for the time they spend in, if nothing else, educating and bringing up male children who were educated. It was they who transmitted the values and many experts agree have more to do with a child’s education than the schools do. So this important and critical societal task was not remunerated as were all others. At the time, even many of the feminists held the view that society would be better off if women were homemakers and brought up the children. However, without any pay (and at the time few or no rights to a husbands earnings of assets) she was bound to be a second class citizen. That idea of housewife compensation obtained almost no support, and the only way for women to gain some kind of position and equality was to work outside the home—the condition that became the norm about 30 years after this was written.
Candace Bushnell is an American author, journalist, and television producer. She wrote a column for The New York Observer (1994–96) that was adapted into the bestselling Sex and the City anthology. The book was the basis for the HBO hit series Sex and the City (1998–2004) and two subsequent movies.
