Driving up housing prices is in itself indicative of income, not status.

Of relevance is the following snippet from http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/

"Does the staggering wealth of particular engineers and programmers mean that there is any chance for nerds to rise socially?

Stammbach worked with a colony of longtailed macaques. In the paper cited above, the running header is "Responses to Specially Skilled Java Monkeys." Stammbach took the lowest-ranking macaque out of the society and taught him to operate a complex machine and obtain food. When the nerd monkey was reintroduced to the society, the higher ranking macaques stopped kicking him out of the way long enough for him to complete operation of the machine and obtain food for the community. I.e., society cooperated to create the conditions under which the nerd could toil for them. However, the monkey who acquired these special skills and provided for the society did not achieve any rise in his dominance status."

Phil Greenspun's title for the above was "Java Monkeys."

(I personally don't have an opinion about the status of programmers relative to other professionals and how it affects women, so just commenting on your remark.)