Agree, which is why I dislike sandboxes so much, but the events are pretty obvious to follow as long as you are paying close attention to the current story and just keep going to all the locations listed in the free roam until there is nothing new to see.
My MC is a male protag, I didn't see/remember a female option, not that it would matter to me since playing as female just takes me out of my preferred immersion and I'm loving everything about the game except the lack of a specific quest log. You should also keep referring to your text messages since you can miss events as well. Other than that there is no written WT or mod available so again, just gotta cycle through the available characters you can interact with and just keep visiting them to see if there is anything new.