Previously she served as Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth in the third cabinet of Angela Merkel from 2013 to 2017.

[5][6] In 1990, she played a small acting role in the DEFA film Forbidden Love, which had the title Verbotene Liebe in the original German and which was directed by Helmut Dziuba.

[7] After graduation in 1992 from the Gymnasium auf den Seelower Höhen,[4] she completed studies in higher civil service (tax administration) of the federal state of Brandenburg.

Schwesig became a Federal Deputy Leader of the SPD on 13 November 2009 alongside Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel and Olaf Scholz (and later Aydan Özoğuz and Ralf Stegner).

In the negotiations to form a fourth coalition government under Merkel following the 2017 federal elections, Schwesig led the working group on education policy, alongside Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Stefan Müller and Hubertus Heil.

Together with Doris Ahnen, Niels Annen, Oliver Kaczmarek and Anke Rehlinger, Schwesig co-chaired the SPD's extraordinary 2018 convention, during which the party elected Andrea Nahles as its first-ever female leader.

[21] In 2019, she was appointed by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community to serve on the committee that oversaw the preparations for the 30th anniversary of German reunification.

In 2009 she supported the idea promoted by Minister Ursula von der Leyen to block websites featuring child pornography.

In 2014, Schwesig helped introducing a bill mandating compulsory quotas for women on the supervisory boards of the Germany's top companies,[25] which was passed in early 2015.

[28] Alongside Dietmar Woidke, Schwesig was instrumental in the Bundesrat's 2020 selection of Ines Härtel as the Federal Constitutional Court’s first judge from East Germany.

The court ruled in December 2014 that Schwesig did not damage the NPD's right to a level playing field because her comments fell under the "political struggle of opinion.

[31] Amid a 2020 diplomatic row over the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, three U.S. senators − Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Ron Johnson – sent a letter to a Baltic Sea port operator in Schwesig's state, threatening the port's managers with “crushing legal and economic sanctions” if they continued to support the project servicing the Russian ships laying the pipe.

[36][37][38][39] In January 2023, controversy arose over contacts Schewesig had with various people as part of Reuters research into Russian influence in Germany and German politics.

"Schwesig's spokesman Andreas Timm said ... that there had been 'no scheduled meeting' between the Prime Minister and Eremenko [and that] she took part in the event at the invitation of the city of Greifswald.