0 a particular level or group of people within an organization such as an army or company:
1 a rank or position within an organization, company, or profession:
in the upper/top/higher echelons of sth Politicians are often hired by private equity for the connections and skills gained while working in the upper echelons of government.
at the upper/top echelon The job allows you a glimpse into day-to-day goings-on at the company's top echelon.
Most believe it is this juggling act that keeps women in the lower echelons of the legal profession.
Discussions took place at the upper echelons of the administration over how to ' provoke ' men to ' volunteer ' as porters.
They focused on working with government or, where possible, ' colonizing ' the echelons of the state that had immediate authority over the region as a whole.
Attaching outsiders to the higher echelons of the public administration.
They also feel excluded from the higher echelons of political and administrative power, as well as social privilege, by virtue of their relative disadvantage in matters of education and resources.
At least for a woman and her family, these new barriers to remarriage in the upper echelons of the working class are an obvious disincentive to divorce.
The implications for the whole post-war pattern of politics seemed serious to many at the conference, especially those from the upper echelons of the government and academia.
Not bad for a new discipline, but we would prefer a fair representation of women in the highest echelons in all discipline, not just women's studies.
I thought that one of the ideas of this reorganisation was that we were going to cut out some of these higher echelons.
