Sirman finished high school education at the American Robert College of Istanbul and did a B.A., M.A.
[4][5] She completed her Ph.D. in 1988 with the thesis titled Peasants and Family Farms: The Position of Households in Cotton Production in a Village of Western Turkey.
[11] Sirman is of the view that the feminist movement in the 1980s was Turkish women's stand against the "Kemalist regime and the limitations of state feminism inspired by Kemalism".
Some feminism and social science scholars are of the opinion that the leftist and Kemalist ideologies equally repress women's gender identity.
[15] Sirman studied Turkey's "nation-building discourse" which had established that a "sovereign" man and his "dependent" wife or mother are "ideal" citizens.