Although women gained nearly 20% of the doctoral degrees awarded in physics by the University of Toronto between 1890 and 1933, Freedhoff was only the second woman to gain a PhD in physics after 1934 at the University of Toronto, following Olga Mracek Mitchell in 1962. Freedhoff earned her PhD in 1965 with a dissertation titled Theory of dipole-dipole interaction in coherent radiation processes. Women were awarded only 5% of the physics doctorates at the University of Toronto between 1960 and 1975.